Plague-Proof Town Planning
IN
Bangalore, South India
By
J. H. STEPHENS, Licentiate, R.I.B.A.,
Late Municipal Engineer to the Corporation of the Civil and
Military Station of Bangalore, South India
*
A brief description of the Plague
and the Rules by which a new
Town extension, “ Fraser Town,”
was made Plague-Proof
\ -
*
T-J t
MADRAS
METHODIST PUBLISHING HOUSE
1914
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The writer teas Municipal Engineer to the Bangalore Corpo¬
ration from the first stages of the Plague to the middle of 1912.
Be was Engineer to the special Plague Department. Most of
those fourteen years were devoted to the study of the conditions
of the poorer Indian Sections of the town and to an attempt to
improve them. Also he had ample opportunity of studying the
plague in its native element, and can therefore, as one who knows,
say about it that any permanent improvements to be complete
should also aim at being Plague-PROOF.
Before coming to Bangalore he was thirty-four years in the
Public Works Department of the Government of Madras. For
about twenty of these, he worked out in the Districts in floods
and famines and in important District works. Be thus ac¬
quired an intimate knowledge and acquaintance with the
Rural population. After living amongst them so long, he knew
personally their goodness and kindness, their simple icants and
requirements and where improvements in their condition were
most required.
For fourteen years after this, he was employed in supervising
the construction of the largest architectural arid other ivorks in
the City of Madras, where he had personal contact with the
Indian Craftsman. The interior of the Madras Law Courts,
decorated under his supervision, and the beautiful stained glass
work is a sample of what that craftsmanship can do.
Looking back with gratitude to God and a grateful apprecia¬
tion of the help of half a century of pleasant contact with a
kindly people, he has now tried to express in a weak way the
things that appear to him to be for their best interests.
Bangalore, S. India,
November, 1914.
The Author.
CONTENTS
Introductory Note
Index .......
Section
I.—Condition of Bangalore at the First Great Out¬
break of Plague .....
II.—Fermentation caused by Damp on the Soil of
Bangalore is the Cause of the Plague at
that place ......
III. —Plague has Greatly Increased the Alcoholic
Habit in India .....
IV. —Defects in the Teaching in Primary and Second¬
ary Schools—the Bi-Products of the Plague .
V. —The First Rule that made Fraser Town Plague-
Proof .......
VI. —An Explanation of the Second, Third, Fourth
and Fifth Plague-Proof Rules
VII. —Some Plague Experiences and Deductions there¬
from . . . . . ...
VIII. —Describes how Congestion was Relieved in the
worst Over-crowded Localities .
IX.— Historic. Praise due to Capitalists for Build¬
ing so largely in a New Locality and on New
SECTION I
Condition of Bangalore at the First Great
Outbreak of Plague
Pages 27 to 34
The plague proof rules on which Eraser Town was built
were learned by actual contact with the plague-infected
in their own houses, in the plague-stricken localities.
2- Nearly every plague-infected house was examined
and an attempt made to ascertain the cause of the plague
in that house. Damp and stagnation of moisture on the
soil it was found had nearly always something to do with
the plague in that place.
3. The scenes of sorrow and grief witnessed in the
plague-stricken localities human sympathy could not
relieve.
4. The breach of a fundamental sanitary law brought
retribution.
5. The severe plague regulations were harder on the
poor than the plague itself.
6. Forcible segregation and its results.
7. Abolished as soon as England knew the suffering it
was causing her Indian subjects.
8. Strike and desertion of sweepers and scavengers
reduced Bangalore to a pitiably filthy condition.
9. Sir Donald Kobertson speedily rectified matters.
10. Organised a separate Plague Department with
Colonel Boa at its head and, amongst other things,^im¬
ported English nurses. « «
Plague-Proof Town Planning in
11. A description of the English nurses and their great
attention to the plague stricken.
12. Many sick were secreted, and others brought too
late; but their last moments were soothed and comforted
by these nurses.
13. The English nurses returned to England after the
worst outbreak of plague was over.
14. The relations and friends of those helped will be
pleased to know that all possible official honours were
conferred on them as their work deserved this small re¬
cognition.
15. Colonel Eoa’s energetic action in arranging camp¬
ing grounds outside the towns, and in making the peoples'
stay there a pleasant picnic.
16. He cleaned and disinfected their houses while the
people were away, saved many precious lives, and.
lightened the sorrows of others by his kindly actions.
17. Inoculation was pushed vigorously in the later stages
of the plague and made popular to the poor by the pay¬
ment of batta.
18- When caste people saw the effect of inoculation on
the non-caste they also sought to be inoculated.
19. At best inoculation is only a temporary protection
and did not destroy the root cause of the plague.
20. It was found that the plague servants were special¬
ly liable to contract the disease.
2L The wearing of heavy boots was a good protection.
22. Shows that the plague germ is on thfe ground or
immediately above it.
23. Government of India kindly give financial help,
and the Plague Department and the Plague Hospital still
continue on a small scale. There are some very fine open
sites in Bangalore, and a permanent isolation hospital
should have a better location, than the very insanitary
one of the present hospital.
Bangalore, South India
SECTION II
Fermentation caused by Damp on the Soil of
Bangalore is the Cause of Plague
at that place
Pages 35 to 44
Water was difficult to obtain in Bangalore till the
Government introduced an abundant water-supply into
every street. The people made very free use of this
ample water-supply.
2. No provision made for carrying off the washing which
soaked into the soil. Plague, the result of the stagnation
and fermentation caused thereby.
8. The Officer who carried out the water-supply sub¬
mitted three different schemes for simultaneously drain¬
ing the town.
4. The Corporation talked and discussed but did not
sanction drainage of any kind.
5. The Government may have stepped in and forced
the Corporation, but this would have been considered a
backward policy.
Plague first broke out at Blackpallv where the
damp was greatest, and from there spread rapidly to other
parts of the town which were as fuel prepared for the
flame.
7. The first effects of the plague on the Hindus were
lamentations and more devotion to their idols.
8. Some of the Muhammadans considered the plague an
English manufactured disease to kill them and the Hindus
because the English did not suffer from it, so they were
very morose and angry.
9. Did not realise that fhe plague was the result of the
violation of a fundamental sanitary law.
10. When the Muhammadans saw that British Officers
were disinterestedly trying to help them in bringing
sunlight and air into their sodden buildings, and in diftin-'’
10 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
mg their water-logged localities, a'new spirit of hearty
good feeling was shown and they became very helpful.
11. Knoxpet erected by the British under the Uflsoor
tank suffered badly with the plague, and is still plague-in¬
fected though its houses have been improved in their
sanitary conditions. Rural re-housing and sanitation re¬
quire very much attention in South India.
12. Blackpally under the Miller’s tank, Ulsoor and
Knoxpet under the Ulsoor tank, and some golla streets,
the dampest localities in Bangalore, formed germinating
beds for the plague, from them it spread to other loca¬
lities.
13. The rat and rat-flea had something to do in spread¬
ing the plague, but it was found in Bangalore that
where damp abounded there plague originated.
14. The rat and rat-flea merely pass on the plague
and are not its primary cause. In Bangalore, damp fer¬
menting into the soil originates plague. The rat is a
kindly provision by Providence to warn men of the near-
approach of disease.
15. The draining of Miller’s tank has greatly reduced
plague in Blackpally. Rot much reduced in places under
the undrained Ulsoor tank. 9
16. The observations now recorded are made for the
special benefit of the poor and for further investigation
by the scientific. They have been .put to practical proof
in the construction of Fraser town which is both Plague-
proof and a health resort.
17. In dealing with malaria, it was not found suffi¬
cient to kill the mosquito. Swamps were drained and
other measures adopted to get to the origin of the disease.
So also with the sleeping sickness and the yellow fever.
With God’s help, the same should be done for the plague.
Its origin should be found and remedies applied.
18. Plague is a creature of the soil in which it is made
or destroyed. Man also is a child of the dust and the
fiagtie of the Universe. The millionaire is made by or-
Bangalore, South India
ll
ganisation. The common man by organisation and God’s
help and righteousness can raise himself above plague
conditions. This is the message of the plague to suffering
mankind.
SECTION III
Plague has Greatly Increased the Alcoholic
Habit in India
Pages 45 to 55
Fear of plague, and the sorrow it caused, set nearly all
the Indian people drinking. Some advised alcohol as a
plague preventive, and others as a help in curing the
disease.
2. People in their fear and in tbeir sorrow ran madly to
the liquor shops, and strong drink became the direct
product of the plague.
3. The story of the Plague Angel and the Holy Fakir.
4. In other parts of South India also on an outbreak of
the plague people became drunken.
The alcoholic habit is accompanied with other evils
and is not easily shaken off.
6. The drink habit has made the servant class of
Bangalore unreliable and has become a great evil to all
South India.
7. Alcohol is not good for the plague but is followed
by a reaction and collapse. Some consider it as poison to
a plague' patient. The stimulant should continue to
sustain and this alcohol does not. This fact ought to be
loudly proclaimed all over South India in all vernaculars.
8. In the countries of Europe, the drink habit is a rem¬
nant of past barbarism. But India was a temperate
country. Young India is now taking to the drink habit.
9. A modification of the English Excise System has
been foisted on India and alcohol manufactured unde*
12 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
Government supervision ; a people who, by religion and
habit, were total abstainers are thus encouraged to drink.
10. A Madras Civilian, it is said, was'sent to study the
Excise Systems of Europe, and to introduce them into
South India; but Europe is moderating its old drinking
habits. Plague has increased drunkenness amongst all
classes of the Indian people.
11. An eminent Edinboro’ Medical Professor’s opinion
on the effect of alcohol on the humaD system.
12. The strong drinking habits of the early settlers in
America, stopped by the vigorous womanhood of that
country, it is now’ a very temperate nation.
13. India has started on the downward drinking habit,
and some think that it will slide downwards very rapidly.
Can its womanhood save it ?
14. Europe is gradually awakening to the evils of
alcohol. May not all wine drinking be prohibited at pure¬
ly State functions, the Native rulers will follow this lead.
15- The sword was voluntarily made over to India
when the Native Princes who rule two-thirds of the
country were asked to raise and to maintain the reserve of
the Indian army.
16. The Indian Princes have shown special enligbt^i-
ment and enterprise in their rale as illustrated in the
Mysore State. Their Excise Systems are modelled after
the English. Will not the latter act very wisely in clos¬
ing all its distilleries and in prohibiting the importation of
all foreign liquor.
17. How a conscientious English Administrator exclud¬
ed the Excise Rules from his portion of the Mysore Pro¬
vince for the good of its people. Dr. Johnson’s opinion of
wine drinking.
18. One of the first acts of the suffragettes if given
the vote will be to deliver the poorer houses of England
from the evils of drink.
1$. What the great Abraham Lincoln said about the
* 2 vile of intemperance.
Bangalore, South India
13
20. German statistics regarding the evil effects of drink
on that nation have made the Kaiser a total abstainer.
21. The drink habit is going to have a very bad effect
on the future of India. A happy and prosperous people
are of more value to a country than a large Excise Revenue.
22. Very great increase of the Excise Revenue in India in
1913. God has given India to England for a wise purpose.
23. The Roman subjugation brought a gift to England
which has made it Great.
24. What gift is India going to receive as the result of
its subjugation to England ? Not merely to learn to speak
the English language grammatically.
25. ^Retirement becomes compulsory in India at an age
when a person has become most useful to the people and
the country and has learned to know its needs and how
best to do it good.
26. Some consider that licenses to sell liquor should
not be put up to public competition; and that the Licen¬
sing Department should be separated from the collection.
The remedy which will do most good to the people will
be to stop all alcoholic manufacture and all alcoholic
importations*
,27. In South India most of the juice from the numer¬
ous palm groves is converted into a fermenting intoxicant,
whereas, it can be made into a high grade sugar. The in¬
toxicant brings a large revenue to the Government which
the sugar does not.
SECTION IV
Defects in the Teaching in Primary and Secondary
Schools—the Bi-Product of the Plague
Pages 57 to 65
Part of the large increase in the Excise Revenue, due
to the increased drink habit created by the plague, is^iven
to new schools, which have thus become a bi-product <jf
14 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
the plague. The orthodox Hindu Excise Contractor’s way
of appeasing bis conscience.
2. The present method of teaching through the
English language is a loss of time and effort to the
Indian.
3. The teaching in system and subject should be what
will most benefit the children of India.
4. His own vernacular is the i^edium through which
an Indian boy can acquire the most information in the
shortest time. Teaching in his own vernacular, on the
many subjects connected with advanced agriculture and
the industries connected therewith will be most useful to
the bulk of the population of India.
5. There is an ancient and rich literature in India
which an Indian enjoys more than the modern produc¬
tions of Europe.
C. European sports an unsuitable foreign product.
Indian exercises, which combine sport and instruction,
will be more suitable and acceptable.
7. The school teachings are not of a kind by which an
Indian boy can make the most of his life. To merely
equip for Government employment may have been enough
for the few in the past; but now something broader
should be aimed at.
8. Agriculture and all the varied industries connected
therewith will afford this broader basis, and will also be
more suitable to present Indian conditions.
9. Some of the best ryots and Indian craftsmen do not
know English.
10. The Indian educational system is modelled some¬
what after the English, whereas, the two countries are
very dissimilar.
11. How different the intense cultivation of the Italian
soil looked to a stranger when compared with the fallow¬
looking condition of English land.
12. In the new impetus now being given to a national
kind.of education, the teaching should be in the vernaeu-
Bangalore, South India
15
lars, and of a nature to conduce to wealth and greatness
of the country.
13. The newly formed Industrial Department should
direct primary education and not the so-called Educational
Department, which should have charge of the High
Schools and Colleges.
14. The Industrial Department will be more in touch
with the requirements and the resources of the people and
the country and can do away with the village sowcar who
has taken the place of the Pindari of old.
15. The Land Improvements Act as now administered
is a failure.
1G. Dne who has mingled intimately with the people in
floods, and famines, and in large city works, and who
knows them well—their wonderful aptitude and their
patient industry, desires with God’s help to do them some
little good.
17. An experienced missionary proposed to teach his
students to qualify for Government employment, to the
neglect of those essential things which modern experience
has shown can make the country rich and great.
18. Good material is thus being wasted and a change is
very necessary.
19. The acute Bengali intellect, by the present system
of education, is taught to look for Government employ¬
ment and would naturally become unsettled if this cannot
be obtained. It should be directed to making India one
of the chief suppliers of the economic wants of the whole
world. Ninety per cent of India’s dense population are
agriculturalists who should be waked up to correct modern
methods and requirements.
16 ' Plague-Proof Town Planning in
SECTION V
The First Rule that Made Fraser Town
Plague-Proof
Pages 66 to 73
Going back to the plague proper, observations in
Bangalore showed that, whenever there was continual
damp and stagnation of sullage soaking into the soil,
there plague was sure to be found.
2. This was not only the case in the insanitary over¬
crowded Indian portions of the town; but also in the open
spacious best favoured localities. The plague shows no
favours in Bangalore when certain sanitary laws are
disregarded.
3. There is more plague in Bangalore during the damp
season than in the hot dry weather ; though the rat and
the rat-flea are much the same during all weathers.
4. It may be said that heat kills the bacilli in the hot-
weather and that damp in the soil may not be the reason
of the excess in the wet season but in Calcutta there is
most plague during the hot season, and least during the
wet months. The reason for the difference lies in the
soil. In Bangalore, the soil when affected by damp
generates the plague germ. In Calcutta, it lets loose
certain chemicals which destroy it.
5. Scientific investigators of the plague are advised to
examine the chemical composition of the soil in different
places to ascertain if this is not a correct conclusion.
6. A consideration of the conditions of the city of
Madras and the reason for its immunity from the plague.
It is not a sanitary model. Some parts are very dirty and
filthy. It has rats in abundance. Plague has been
brought into the city more than once from plague-infected
places but it still continues free from the disease.
The jreason is said to be the chemical composition of its
soil which kills the plague microbe.
Bangalore, South India
17
7. On a comparison of Bangalore, Calcutta, and Madras,
though the rat is very much the same in all these places,
yet the plague affects them differently on account of varia¬
tions in their soil. The rat, a merciful provision of Pro¬
vidence to warn men of the near approach of the plague.
8. It was found in Bangalore that while damp stimulat¬
ed the plague good drainage removed it. Mr. Harris
therefore drained the parts of the native town where
there was most plague with the best results.
9. This led up to the first great rule in making Fraser
town plague-proof, viz., to countersink all its roads about
1J feet so as to keep the buildiDg sites on either side high
and dry and well drained.
10. Fraser town is plague-proof because it is in the
first instance dry and well drained. But the same rule
may not apply to other towns. Observation and experi¬
ment will decide what is best for each place.
11. The observations made at Bangalore were put to a
practical test at Fraser town and were found correct.
12. Explains how the effect of the natural drainage
passing along the upper soil was counteracted.
SECTION VI
The 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th Plague-Proof Rules
Explained
Pages 74 to 84
The second plague-proof rule is to have the basements
of all houses 1J feet high and constructed of stone rubble
pointed on the outside with good cement. The first rule
will keep the sites dry. The 2nd rule will keep the houses
dry and prevent vermin burrowing into them.
2. There had to be great care in arranging the charac¬
ter of the buildings. To build primarily for the poor.
To build sanitarily and on plague-proof rules and to get a
fair return for the money expended. ,
18 * Plague-Proof Town Planning in
8. To build t.he house no as to meet the above require¬
ments and to run the scheme on sound business lines
often a middle course had to be adopted.
■1. The third plague-proof rule was a hard door imper¬
vious to vermin. The cow dung smeared floor was almost
a part of the Hindu religion so that this rule had to be
very carefully explained.
5. As Brahma’s second birth was from the belly of the
cow everything connected wifh this animal was comodtr-
cd sacred. The plague has shaken the beliefs of many
Hindus in the integrity of their traditions.
0. Both Hindus and Muhammadans were kcemr . n
building bazaars than houses. All bazaars had in' u .
stone skirtings.
7. A repetition of the first- three rules and an expla¬
nation regarding the way the land was divided into bun 1-
ing blocks and building sites.
8. In each building site only l was to be built on and
s to be kept as an open area all around the building. 1 no
area to be occupied by the building was decided alter
measuring up the area occupied by the poor in the con¬
gested parts of the town.
9. This method of building is a modern sanitary im¬
provement adopted in other parts of the world.
10- The way the plague worked in the golia street of
Ulsoor is explained; this led up to the above method ci
building being converted into the fourth plague-proof rule.
If. It improved the general conditions and ways
of Indian living and especially benefited Indian child
life.
32. Great vigilance was required in enforcing this rule,
as most builders considered that they had a right to cover
the larger part of their sites with buildings. Very'great
care will be required to prevent the infringement of this
rule in future.
1^}. All the houses had windows or ventilators opening
•into the external air but, as these are easily closed by the
Bangalore, South India
19
occupants, some method had to be devised beyond the
reach of the people to adjust.
14. This led to the fifth plague-proof rule. The use of
the Mangalore tiles for the roof covering of all the build¬
ings. It is the old Roman pattern tile with open joints
through which continual, ventilation passes night and day.
15. The first batch of evicted people from congested
Blackpally could not stand this continual ventilation but
are now accustomed to it. These tiles also afford no
lodgment to mice or rats.
lb. The five rules which make Fraser town plague-
proof and the most sanitary built town in India recapi¬
tulated.
17. Improvement in economic conditions in India will
cause social and sanitary improvement, better housing,
and a higher standard of living all round, this will react
in permanently expelling the plague from India.
18. The economic improvements in Germany are held
up for Indian imitation. Its political ambitions should be
a warning to the leaders of India who would best devote
all their energies to economic improvements w’hieh will
also indirectly prove plague preventions.
19. The Indian Expeditionary Force like the Crusaders
of old should return with knowledge which will permanent¬
ly enrich India and thus become plague preventions.
SECTION VII
Some Plague Experiences and Deductions
Therefrom
Pages 85 to 93
The rat is associated with insanitary surroundings and
is considered as a sort of unclean vermin.
2. The squirrel is the opposite, it is beautiful in its
looks, and clean in its habits. ,
20 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
3. Yet both ate alike liable to the plague.
4. The rat and the squirrel are not infected by the flea,
they rather infest the flea and thus impart the plague to
man.
0. The rodent is affected by fermentations and chemi¬
cal changes in the soil caused by 4amp, and the infection
is attracted down to the rat hole and up to the tree tops-
0. Plague was often taken into Fraser town by the
plague-infected ; but it does not remain there.
. 7. Having succeeded in keeping Fraser town dry it is
therefore plague-proof.
8. Like Fraser town, plague has been often taken into
Madras, yet it is free of plague through something in its
soil. *
9. Suggests that experiments be made by impregnating
the soil in the damp places of Bangalore with crude
sulphur.
10. The squirrels on the huge solitary Ficus tree in the
compound of the Mayo Hall become plague-infected.
11. One fell at the Engineer’s feet and died, and a
person in his office contracted the plague and died.
12. The peculiar travelling propensities of the plague.
Originating in damp it travels and its route is marked by
dead vermin.
13. Where sanitary laws have been neglected people
also died.
14. Suggests other experiments on the Baugalore soil,
without, and with, powdered sulphur.
15. Madras is like an index finger pointing out that
something in the soil can keep plague out of a place.
16. English people who live in open localities would be
plague victims if plague-infected rats and fleas were
allowed in their houses. ' ?
17. Two English girls who contracted the plague and
the cause. Plague occurs in the same house repeatedly,
becaqse the habits of the occupants have not changed.
• 18. The best good Fraser town is doing :is in teaching
21
Bangalore, South India
the poorer classes of natives a better way of living, it is of
special benefit to the health of the children and to coming
generations.
19. The remarks made on the plague are intended for
the good of the people.
20. Thankful to Mr. ^Fraser and to others for allowing
the new rales to be introduced in the building of Fraser
town.
21. The fire in London did not finally cast out the
plague in England. Improvements in the economic and
sanitary conditions of the people effected this.
22. Advocates a new mass movement to improve the
economic and sanitary conditions of India as the only
mpans of finally casting out the plague from that land.
SECTION VIII
Describes How Congestion was Relieved in the
worst Overcrowded Indian Localities
Pages 94 to 104
Index to Section VIII—The removal of congestion
in Bangalore was made in an original manner.
2. A large portion of ancient Mysore was divided up
amongst a number of Poligars or Petty Chiefs who kept
their own armies and oppressed the common people.
They often quarelled with each other and sometimes with
their own Maharaja.
3. This system made it easy for a brave soldier like
Hyder Alii to become the Sultan of the whole of Mysore.
His son Tippu Sultan was too busy with Military ambi¬
tions and exterior conquests to introduce a more settled
form of Government in Mysore.
4. When the English conquered the Province they rein¬
stated the old Hindu Maharaja but had some trouble with
the wild and powerful Poligars.
22 Plague-Proof Tow* Planning in
0. To keep tbe Maharaja on his throne, to check the
power of the PoHgars. and gradually introduce an en¬
lightened form of Government into Mysore, a tract of
land was assigned for tbe location of a British Military
force, this formed the beginning of the Civil and Military
Station of Bangalore. %
6. In ancient warfare a large retinue of camp-followers
was a necessary evil. And to be ready for any emergency
they bad to be located in different parts of the CaDton-
ment under Military observation and control. This was
the origin of the different sections of the Indian portions
of the Bangalore Cantonment.
7. These Indian portions of the town were af first w.01
laid out, but families and bangers on increased, and hn.-s
and hovels were added, till the places gradually o'"’
very congested, became very insanitary, and were ihe
chief regions of the plague.
8. A census showed that the congestion in the Indian
sections of the town was from about 250 to 000 persons
per acre. As tbe health of both the Military and the
Civilian depended so much on the Indians it was resolved
to build three new extensions solely for Indians and to
open out the congested Indian localities.
9. The rules by which the first extension was carried
out have been already explained. A usual method for
improving old localities is to form wide boulevardes and
flank them with new palatial buildings but this, though
very spectacular, does not sometimes touch the most
congested parts, where the poorer people reside. These
may be outside the boulevardes.
10. To obtain a bird’s-eye view of a congested locality,
Mr. Harris, I.C.S., the Collector, and Colonel The Hon’
ble Sir Donald Robertson, the British Resident, went on
to the tops of the houses; hence it was observed that the
greatest congestion was amongst the hovels and huts well
behind the principal streets the removal of which would
.admit light and air where it was most wanted.
Bangalore, South India
23
11. The Hon’ble Mr. Stuart Fraser was taken over the
mud roofs of a congested locality, they were so closely
packed together that hs was able to walk over them for
some distance in either direction. In this case an interior
open square was formed and connected with the road.
These methods give the maximum degree of sanitary
improvement where it is most required and at a minimum
of cost.
12. The details of the method by which the area and
proportion and quality of the portions to be removed is
explained.
13. The method of preparing an estimate of cost is
explained. By working through pancbayats of the lead¬
ers of the people a saving of 25 per cent on the legal
valuation, was effected, the people were pleased and
happy, and no appeal was made in any one case. The
Government should be grateful for the gratuitous help
rendered by these panchayats.
14. Mutual trust and good feeling between the com¬
mon people and the executive made a difficult work
agreeable.
15. Colonel the Hon’ble Sir Hugh Daly, Resident in
Mysore, Surgeon-General the Hon’ble Sir Pardey Lukis,
Director-General, Indian Medical Service, were taken
over some of the congested portions of the town next to
be improved. They also viewed the congestion from the
higher houses and approved of the detailed plans of what
was proposed.
1(1. The method of removing the worst huts in the
most congested places behind the main streets was most
suitable to Bangalore ; but there may be other places
where this and the forming of wide boulevardes may be
combined.
17. The common people from whom houses were ac¬
quired were very amenable when influenced by good
leaders; but the same people would have been just the
other way if influenced by unscrupulous leaders. Some’
2i Plague-Proof Town Planning in
leaders at present seem tu be deluded by incorrect war
news.
18. As the womanhood of the early settlers of America
stopped the hard drinking habits ot its men in those days;
so, cannot the stronger and more enlightened womanhood
of Europe and of the whole world federate and organise
to stop wars and the slaughter of their men. If [hey
organise and devoutly put their case into God’s hands, He
will work out this great change for them.
J.9. After the removal of the congestion as already ex¬
plained the people were asked to improve the houses' that
remained and many responded.
SECTION IX
Historic
Pages 105 to 115
House occupiers refused to build their own housts in
Fraser town.
2. Government loans on easy terms were arranged for
them and some were given sites; but yet they refused to
build.
3. The place was at first raggy fields and they did not
care to build out of the town.
4> Even capitalists came forward to build only after
Mr. Lindly gave th& lead.
5. There were many things then against the locality.
(i. A new extension was the only means by which the
poor in the congested parts could be relieved.
7. Capitalists deserve great praise for spending money
freely on new and untried rules, and methods which may
have failed.
8. Recommends that their names be inscribed on a
stone obelisk in a prominent position in the town.
9. ( Mr. Eutbna Sing made some of the houses he built
and owned into an astizan colony.
Bangalore, South India
25
10. As newly arrived fresh young Englishmen and
women are very liable to enteric, even so tHe plague is a
rat disease.
It is not the cause, but the victim of the plague.
11. The real cause of enteric is known and is being
removed.
12. So the cause of the plague should be discovered by
experiment and overcome as at Eraser town.
13. The Executive sympathized and tried to help the
philanthropic builders.
14: Gave them the earth from the countersunk roads
to make bricks with.
15. Helped in revising and quickly arranging all plans
of buildings erected.
16. The neglect of the economic conditions of India is
keeping the country poor.
17. The building of tanks by the old Hindu Govern¬
ments advanced the agriculturally economic prosperity of
South India.
18. How a young man, who gave up Government em¬
ployment, and went into economic business prospered
beyond ail expectations.
19. When the economic conditions of India are improved,
the people will realise and appreciate the value of British
Administration.
20. These things are mentioned because the writer
cares for the people of India and desifes to see the sorrow
caused by the plague removed.
21. Fraser town a health resort and the poor white’s
paradise. The poor, both black and white, live in Fraser
town in peace and security.
22. The soldier’s widow with her clean three-roomed
cottage and garden for a rental of only rupees three.
23. The necessity for vigilance in the future.
24. The publication of this paper that the importance
of the rules adopted may be understood and observed.
25. Historical— The whole scheme of improvemenjt
863—4 >
20 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
first submitted by Sir Donald Robertson after approval
by the late Sir Arthur JBrant'oot.
26. The portion sanctioned and carried out submitted
by Sir James Bourdillon.
27. The original methods on which Fraser town was
built as a plague-proof town encouraged by the Hon’ble
Mr; Stuart Fraser.
28. Mr. Fraser asked to give the town his name. Its
great success both sanitarily and financially. It has be¬
come a model which some other parts of India are trying
to imitate.
29. Should be introduced into every town in India and
the people learn that the best social reform will be a more
sanitary way of living. . It will most benefit the children
and coming generations.
BO. The work of England in India is a remarkable ful¬
filment of ancient prophecy made more than 2,500 years
ago.
31. The consummation of England’s work will be to
raise the Princes of India to an exalted place in the great
parliament of the nations of all the earth; and to make
the Indian Nation a great and glorious people.
End
Bangalore, South India
27
SECTION I
Condition of Bangalore at the First Great
Outbreak of Plague
To understand aright the principles according to which
the Indian parts of Bangalore were opened out and its
new Extension, Fraser Town, was made plague-proof, it
will be necessary to first consider the exceptionally plague-
afflicted condition of Bangalore for some years before
Fraser Town was built, and the practical lessons learned
therefrom. It was these lessons learned amid the ravages
of the disease, which suggested the principles according
to which the town was built, and which have rendered it
immune from plague. It was no easy work. It required
nothing short of going in amongst plague-affected houses
and the plague-stricken ; it meant the laying aside of
official conventionality, and joining the stricken people in
a fellowship of sorrow, that one might, as it were, beard
the lion in his den, learn his secrets, and make use of
them for future guidance, and the good of poor humanity.
2. The plague first appeared in Bangalore in September
1898, and continued in a very severe form for some years.
It was known to be a preventable disease, and it was con¬
sidered to be the first duty of any one who desired to help
the people in this dire calamity to study its causes, so as
to mitigate its ravages. For this purpose nearly every
plague-infected house was carefully examined, and the
reason ascertained why that particular house, more than
any other house, was plague-infected. It was found
very frequently that damp —damp caused by a continual
stagnation of water and washings into the soil, and damp
S8 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
from any other cause which gave rise to chemical action
on the soil of Bangalore was an almost invariable contri¬
buting cause of plague.
8. In making these examinations, one had to mix freely
with the plague-stricken people in their humble homes in
the low native quarters of the town, and the scenes of
sorrow and distress one saw there were heart-rending.
Often young and strong husbands and fathers were stricken,
and the family was left suddenly destitute, while young
mSthers, and little children, were also continual victims.
There was hardly one house in the poorer localities in
which some one had not died. In some cases whole
families, father, mother and children, were ail taken away,
and the humble home left truly desolate. It was worse
than what the slaying of the first born in Egypt must
have been to that once proud people. The wail of sorrow
from those poor desolated homes, rose to high heaven in a
humble cry for help, and human sympathy tried in vain to
do all it could to relieve these afflicted ones. How small a
thing was all human aid in the face of this great sorrow ■
It was not the time to teach these poor bereaved ones,
that it was the voice of God telling them, and some of their
leaders through them, that the transgression of any law,
sanitary, or moral, will bring retribution. How, without
knowing it, a fundamental Sanitary law was grievously
broken and disregarded in Bangalore, will be explained
further on. Many a judge, with a heart full of love, had
yet to administer justice, and so this people suffered.
4. The plague regulations of that time, though well-
meant, and emanating from that very high authority, the
Government of India, added greatly to the miseries of the
poor and afflicted people. All the family of a plague sub¬
ject, and all those living in houses adjoining, wer ? forcibly
removed to distant camps. The state of the young chil¬
dren, and young women, under these conditions can be
better imagined than expressed. The people dreaded the
plague regulations more than the disease itself, especially
Bangalore, South India
29
the Muhammadans, whose ideas of gosha were directly
violated by them, the result being that the plague-infected
were secreted till death, and, after death, the corpse was
left in the house, and all the family and the neighbours
decamped to places beyond the limits $jf the town, often
carrying and spreading infection to other places.
5. In some cases, with a strange sense of irony, plague
corpses were left at night in the compounds or verandahs
of some European official’s residence, and the family fled.
People knew that, at the worst, the English would See
that the corpse was properly buried. In one case a corpse
was left standing against the closed door of an official’s
house. In the morning, when the door was opened, the
official had a gruesome welcome. Some of the corpora¬
tion officials, with their own bands had to carry out half-
putrefied corpses from abandoned houses. These plague
regulations, it is understood, were an adaptation of those
in use by the Russian Government, in dealing with its
plague-stricken northern subjects. The budmashes of
Bangalore had a glorious time in looting abandoned
houses. It was as if all the spirits of evil were let loose
on Bangalore. No doomed city of ancient History can
have experienced greater sorrow than the poor of Banga¬
lore at that time.
6. As soon as tender-hearted Britannia knew how hard
these dreadful regulations were on her Indian subjects,
they were at once abolished, but the poor of Bangalore
had, in the meantime, endured a baptism of suffering
which will never be forgotten.
7* About this time, those very humble, but necessary,
and often brave men and women, the sweepers and
scavengers of the town became frightened owing to the
severity of the regulations, and left Bangalore without
permission. There is no water-borne conservancy in the
old-fashioned town. All night soil, from all closets, is
removed by hand. When the sweepers and scavengers
decamped, there was no one to do this very necessary
Plague-Proof Town Planning in
and important work. In addition, it is to be remembered
that street rubbish from the public dust bins is also
removed by hand into carts, and conveyed to the fields
beyond the town ; the public roads are also swept, and
all droppings removed by hand, and when ail the people
who attended to these very necessary works deserted the
town, for some days, fair Bangalore was a spectacle to
make mortals shudder, roads unswept, heaps of vile house-
sweepings and fermenting rubbish at every street corner,
night-soil accumulating in every closet, both Native and
English. Verily, Bangalore then looked as if it would soon
expire, under the weight of its own unburied filth and
fermenting rubbish. The eruptions from Vesuvius, were,
at worst, spasmodic and always healthy, whereas, the
emanations from about 150,000 people, and many thou¬
sands of horses and cattle, were continuous and always
offensive. This greater crater of always discharging filthy
matter, would soon have made a quick end of Bangalore.
8. But there was at that time a very energetic person
at the head of the local administration in the person of
Colonel Robertson, Resident in Mysore, afterwards Sir
Donald Robertson, who was one of those Military politi¬
cians who, in a hearty and ready way, is equal to ^any
emergency. He immediately imported scavengers from'
the Bombay Presidency-obtained cattle and carts from
the Mysore Province, and soon had the whole town, and
all the public and private closets, swept and cleaned.
9. He also selected a very energetic officer, Colonel
Roe, R.E., and made him the head of a Special Plague
Department, with a staff of medical officers imported
from other parts of India, and instituted a regular house-
to-house inspection, and the control of all cemeteries,
where plague corpses used to be buried at night without
notice. He enlarged the two special Plague Hospitals,
and imported English nurses to look after the large number
of plague patients, as good nursing was said to be more
important than medicine for this form of disease. It was
Bangalore, South India
31
truly a titanic work of organization, but it was soon done,
and hope an4 order was evolved out of chaos and dark
despondency, and fair Bangalore rose from its plague
cursed filthy surroundings to be again the garden of
Southern India.
10. Those English nurses were a well-thought-out
addition to the plague establishment, and were a great
help to the poor and afflicted. Clean and well-trained,
they put their arms around the dirtiest and most unclean
looking sick, and gently attended to them. Undaunted
by the plague, which was then considered infectious, they
received in the kindest manner every sick person, whom
the ne^vly-formed plague department sent into the hos¬
pitals, and at once attended to them.
11. If the patient were not too long delayed before
reaching the hospital, kindly nursing helped them over
the disease, and bubonic plague, if attended to in time,
was found to be curable, and good nursing had most to
do with the cure. But, alas, most of the cases sent to
the hospital had been secreted in the houses till it was
not possible to secrete them any longer. In one case a
Hindu Municipal official had the plague on him, and
though he must have suffered pain, he attended office and
continued to do his work as usual, and left at 6 in the
evening. Nest day he was dead. Had the poor fellow
at once informed the plague officers as soon as he felt the
illness coming on him, he would have been attended to
without delay, and might have been living to this day.
The strictness of the plague regulations frightened this
man, and were the cause of his and many other deaths.
Many plague-stricken ones in the last gasp of death were
received by tbe kindly and well-trained English nurses,
and their last moments of life were soothed and com¬
forted.
12. After tbe severest part of the outbreak of plague
was ever, these nurses, splendid ministers of menjy to
“pain and anguish,” disease and death, of the worst
32
Plague-Proof Town Planning in
kind, returned to their own country. Their work was
beyond human praise and honouring.
13. It will be some satisfaction to the friends and rela¬
tion-' of those they helped, to know that all possible
ollieial honours were conferred on them. They deserved
something that might bo handed down in their families
after they have passed away. A soldier, if he only shows
his face on a battle field, can claim a rnedai. and a sepa¬
rate clasp for each engagement in which he mu t no
taken part, but these devoir 1 nur-ei w. re m the jaws ot
death all the time, amid all lhe depressing and aistrcs.-inr'
influences of the worst form of disease, and wuh siiem
contagion all around them, requiring more courage ana
devotion than the bravest of our heroic soldiers on tne
battle-field. Surely, under such circumstances, an award
which they can band down to their posterity should i
conferred on them.
14. It is said that when the plague deity 1 t 1
Caucasus in about 600 B. C,, Apollo supplied A Un, I,.,
favourite priest, with an arrow, on which he rode safeiv
through the air to Greece, and thus escaped from the
plague. The Chief Plague Officer had, apparently, learnt
some lessons from this ancient story. He airang r t_d-t*»r-
camping grounds in the open fields outside the town, and
supplied those who required them, with bamboos ana
mats for temporary huts, in those fields. Very inativ took
ready advantage of this opportunity to leave the piague-
afflicted town. Colonel Roe, though a true son of Mars,
unlike Apollo, did not supply them with heavenly food ail
the time they camped out. He, however arranged for
bazaars in the camps, and the stay of the people there
was a regular picnic.
15. While the people were away, their bouses were
thoroughly cleared, and disinfected with perchlorids of
Mercury and other less expensive disinfectants, and, after
a fevy weeks absence, the people returned, invigorated by
this open-air treatment, to much cleaner and healthier
Bangalore, South India
33
houses. Very many precious lives were saved by this
simple and sane thoughtfulness. The people had a true
friend in that energetic and practical chief of the plague
department, at a time when they appeared to be forsaken
by their best friends, and when one’s closest relations
often deserted those whom they ought to have shielded
and protected. Apollo’s arrow', while flying away with
his favourite priest from the plague at the Caucasus, is
said, on another occasion, to have rained plague germs
into the camp of the Greeks before Troy. We must,
however, return to the unpleasant story of the plague in
Bangalore.
16. Before closing this section, a reference should be
made to inoculation. This was not pushed so much in
the early stage of the plague as afterwards. The security
it afforded was not fully understood, and the quality of
the lymph used at first was by some considered to be too
severe, and by others too mild. It was afterwards made
very popular by some of the leading Hindu citizens
coming forward and allowing themselves to be publicly
inoculated. Also, as it incapacitated one for work for a
few days, some of the wealthy citizens of the town showed
a very public spirit by coming forward and paying batta
to the poor people inoculated. Through this well-timed
liberality, nearly all the non-caste population of Bangalore
were inoculated.
17. At the next outbreak of plague, it was found that
nearly all the non-castes were exempt, and only the caste
people were easy victims. This so exercised the caste
people, that they also came forward in large numbers to
be inoculated. Major Standage, Residency Surgeon, who
had by this time succeeded Colonel Roe, R. E., Chief
Plague Officer, inaugurated a vigorous campaign of house-
to-house inoculation amongst the most respectable castes.
Thus, in a short time, both the non-caste and caste people
were protected. Many valuable lives were saved Ijy this
timely popularizing of inoculation by Major Standage,
34 ¥ Plague-Proof Town Planning in
I.M. S., and the Hon’ble Mr. Stuart Fraser, the Resident
in Mysore, who showed his interest in this matter 1 by
being present at several large inoculation gatherings.
18. But, at best, inoculation was only a protection, and
even as such, its effect was said to be shortlived. It did
not go to the root cause of the plague, and try to destroy
it there. However, it did good to the people, and quite a
large number benefited by its means, and, as batta was
paid, it allowed working people a two-days’ holiday. This
plague expenditure soon made the Bangalore Corporation
bankrupt, but the Government of India came forward
with help, and the plague department, and the plague
hospital, in a very limited form, still continue as relics
of past trouble and disorder. A permanent isolation
hospital should be erected, with better sanitary sur¬
roundings.
19. When the plague department was formed, it was
found that those cleaning and disinfecting the plague-
houses were very liable to contract the disease. The
germ seemed to attack them through the soles of their
feet and through wounds in their hands. They were
supplied with heavy boots, and this, it was found, formed
a good protection, while those with wounds in their hands
were not allowed to work.
20. This throws a side-light on the character of the
plague germ. It is on the soil, and also a few feet above
it. The more this subject is considered, the more
apparent it will become that the little rodent and the flea
are victims and channels of communication of the plague
to man, but they are not the primal cause of the plague
and the plague life. This is formed in the soil, and
travels in it and in the air immediately above it.
Bangalore, South India
35
SECTION II
Fermentation caused by Damp on the Soil of
Bangalore is the Cause of the Plague
at that place
.Tost before the outbreak of the plague in Bangalore in
1898, the new pipe water-supply was given to the Town.
Before this, water had to be drawn from deep wells, or
carted from surrounding open reservoirs, an expensive
process, so that the luxury of water to the poor was very
limited. It was sold by the barrel or the ancient sheep
skin. When good filtered water was brought to their
very door steps, and had only to be drawn from the
public stand posts, the poorer people revelled in this new-
found joy. It was to them a gift of the gods, of which
they made a very free use and were very thankful to the
good Government of the day. An abundant supply of
good water, and all for nothing, to drink and to bathe in,
and even to wash their clothes in, was to them a modern
miracle. There was no more the carrying of the brass
vessel or the humbler cbattie to the deep and distant well;
no more spending their hard-earned pice on buying a
bucketful of water.
2. No regular bathing ghats were constructed, so that
their dark hovels, and undrained backyards were used for
washing purposes and the water stagnated, was absorbed,
and worked a silent work. The people played with the
abundant water-supply, as children with a new-found toy.
But alas! alas! they did not know, that while the Govern¬
ment had done them a great good in giving this abundant
supply of pure and wholesome water, the Municipality,
some of their own representatives, had been almost cri¬
minally neglectful. The greater portion of millions of gal-
3G
Plague-Proof Town Planning in
Ions of good water brought into the town, remained there,
soaking into the hovels and backyards and narrow alleys,
and by its action on the soil, becoming stagnant cesspools,
giving out miasma and causing disease of all kinds,
it was then that plague first came in!o the town it is
believed as a direct result of this stagnation of moisture
in the soil of Bangalore.
3. The exceptionally smart officer who carried out the
water-works scheme, foresaw the necessity of a drainage
scheme going on simultaneously with the water-supply,
and submitted three different methods, worked out in
great detail, showing how this could be done.
4- But Municipal Corporations were talking and dis¬
cussing.' Much talking amuses some, and makes others
appear very erudite, while the people who elect them
think, that those who talk much do the most, and so they
talked and discussed as to which of the three schemes sub¬
mitted was the best. In the meantime the water-works,
which were carried out by the Government were com¬
pleted, and millions of gallons of water flowed into the
doomed towD, most of it was absorbed into the soil, arid set
up silent chemical actions and fermentations, and the out¬
break of plague, a preventable disease, was one of the chief
results. A very flagrant breach of a well-known sanitary
law brought its own punishment, and the poor died like
shepherdless sheep.
5. It may be thought that the Government ought to
have stepped in and prevented this grievous wrong to a
lot of ignorant people. But where there are free repre¬
sentative institutions even the power of Government has
its limitations, and we are witnessing more of this daily in
other parts of India. Some think that it is not for the good
of the country as a whole, but the leaders of the people
demand it, and it is supposed to be the essence of liberal
Government to accede to the wishes of the people as voiced
by their leaders. Some can learn only by experience, and
often it is a hard teacher, as was the case in Bangalore.
Bangalore, South India
37
It was not want of funds which caused this delay in the
construction of the drainage scheme for the corporation
then was rich, and had a large balance at its bankers.
It was just the spirit of discussion and a procrastination,
not new to India, and also perhaps a want of knowledge
of the danger of delay. The corporation had then two
eminent Engineers on the Board, who possibly may have
forewarned it of the danger to the town in a plentiful
supply of water stagnating in its low native quarters,
causing immense discomfort to the people because there
was no means by which the daily washings could be
carried away at once beyond the limits of the town.
Perhaps it was considered that the poor people should not
wash themselves so freely, or it may be it was thought
that the soaking of good water into the soil was not a
very great danger. Possibly in some places, and in some
soils, it is not so great as in others. In houses with
compounds, where the washings could be used for garden¬
ing purposes, as was the case in most English houses, it
was no danger at all. But it was rank poison in the low
undrained over-crowded native quarters where the wash¬
ings sank into the mud floors of the hovels, and where,
by the chemical action of the soil, it set up a fermenta¬
tion, breeding a damp miasma, and setting free microbes
sufficient to destroy a robust nation, and before which
the poor of Bangalore had no chance whatever ; so plague
broke out in the town, and hundreds died daily.
6. The Plague started in Blackpally, where the damp
was greatest. This part of the Cantonment was inhabit¬
ed by native pensioners and the families of some of the
large number of camp followers so necessary in ancient
Warfare, not very far above it in the same valley were
formed the Miller’s tanks, by banking up the valley at a
higher level. When the tanks had water in them, Black-
pally, lying below, was alw'ays damp and always un¬
healthy. In the old cholera days that disease always
showed itself first in that part of the town, and now, with
38 Plague-Proof Town Pluming in
this new supply of undrained water added to the old
damp, plague also first showed itself in the town in this
place, and from here spread rapidly to other parts, which
were as fuel prepared for the flame.
7. The mild Hindu took the affliction with wails of
sorrow, and lamentations of woe, and was content with
making special sacrifices to his gods, and showing more
devotion in his offerings to the spirits of evil.
8. Not so the Muhammadan. Though physically strong¬
er as a race, the surroundings in which he lived, were, if
anything, more insanitary than in the case of the Hindus.
The sodden condition of his dark hovels and backyards,
and the purdah habits of his women, were great helps in
the generation and propagation of the plague microbe, and
many Muhammadans were victims to this disease in Ban*
galore, whereas the English people were almost entirely
exempt. The Muhammadan did not understand this, and
what made it still worse, were the arbitrary plague rules
introduced by the English. This caused a moroseness
and discontent which pervaded the parts of the town
inhabited by the more ignorant Muhammadans, and
English people had to be very careful how they passed
through some parts of Blackpally. When coming across
the many Muhammadan funerals of those days, one had
to be very polite and discreet, and avoid taking offence at
visible scowls and inaudible mutterings. The lower and
more ignorant Muhammadans considered that this new
disease had been specially manufactured by the English,
to kill off the Muhammadans and Hindus, and that that was
the reason why the English did not suffer from it. They
would have been better satisfied if both English and
Muhammadan had shared alike, but, that one should be
practically exempt, and the other die daily in large num¬
bers, was to them'convincing proof that the English were
making the disease to specially kill off the mild Hindu
and ( the more pugnacious Muhammadan, and there was
visible discontent in some of the Muhammadan quarters.
Bangalore, South India
39
9. It was not the time to point out to them their
flagrant transgression of the most elementary sanitary
laws, and that the way of transgressors is always hard,
or that the English, with all their faults, had some regard
to sanitation. All this came afterwards, and in the
meantime, as far as possible, one sympathized with them
in the great calamity which had overtaken them as an
act of God, and that no doubt it was. In all wise and
settled Governments, the transgression of law has to be
punished, or the world would become a pandemonium,
and unfit for human existence. Wrong-doing and death,
or retribution of some kind, are Nature’s inexorable rules.
One can realise a loving God, and the angels, His minis¬
ters of mercy, mingling their tears with this sorrowing
people.
“Tis said that the morning stars
Sang aloud at Creation’s birth;
That the sons of God shouted for joy.
As He rounded this new born earth.”
But how can they sing on still,
Looking down on these sorrowing scenes ?
10- It was fortunate for Bangalore that there were then
no political agitators about to fan this spark of ignorant
discontent into an active flame of hateful action. Before
this era descended on Southern India the discontent had
passed away and was succeeded by one of hearty good¬
will. When the Muhammadans saw that the English
officers were disinterestedly doing their utmost in re¬
moving the worst hovels in their most congested locali¬
ties, and were letting in the blessed sunlight and air into
their sodden and darkened homes, and that their streets
and houses were being rapidly drained, and all this done
through panchayats cf their own people to whom the
evils of insanitation were being explained, a new know¬
ledge and spirit dawned on their always intelligent in¬
stincts, and they commenced to appreciate and to love ike
English people working in their midst, and became most
40 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
hearty and helpful, willing to go to some inconvenience,
in aiding those who were sincerely trying to do them good.
11. Knoxpet may be mentioned as another illustration
of the ill-advised way in which the English have planted
their more recent additions to Bangalore. This was laid
out about 30 years ago, and was intended as a new suburb
for the servant classes, and its position was fixed below
the Ulsoor tank. Whenever there is water in the tank,
Knoxpet is damp and unhealthy, and has become the
great stronghold of plague. Attempts were made by the
plague department to raise the walls of the houses and to
improve the ventilation, but with very little improvement
in the health of the place. It is still plague-ridden, and
had rather a bad time of it last year (iy 13). Some
attempt to drain it was made when it was first formed,
but the drainage was defective, and has not been improved.
If the villages planted by the old Hindus are examined,
it will be found that, with all their defective sanitary
knowledge, most of the sites of these villages are not
below, but above, the level of the village tank, and are
thus dry and comparatively healthy. This was probably
done more for safety from the floods, caused by the surplus
water of the tanks or from breaches in the banks, as, in
so many other respects rural sanitation and rehousing are
crying needs, and require a good deal cf overhauling.
12. Thus Blackpally under the Miller's tank, and
Knoxpet under the Ulsoor tank, and also all golla places,
or streets where milch cattle are kept, suffered most
from the plague. These golla streets, in all sections
of the town, were plague nests. There is great room
for sanitary improvement here. They reek with abun¬
dant and offensive damp, caused by the cattle urine,
cattle washings, and fermenting rice water, in which
Indian cattle are largely indulged, as it is believed
that the more they imbibe of this water the larger will
be .the supply of watery milk. These three damp and
sodden localities formed the generating beds of the plague
Bangalore, South India
41
microbe from which it spread to other places. It cannot
be said that there are more rats and fleas in these parts of
the town than in the other native sections, as, for instance,
in the grain bazaar, and yet there was more plague here
than in most other parts. The highest scientific author¬
ities have given very particular attention to plague inves¬
tigation, and have declared against the plague-rat and
the plague-flea ; they are doubtless correct but in actual
experience it is found that places where there are not
more rats and fleas than in other places, yet have more
plague.
13. The rat and flea are perhaps more abundant in the
higher than in the lower and more sodden localities, and
yet there is often more plague in the latter than in the
former. What can be the reason ? If the rat and flea are
solely responsible for the plague, plague ought to be most
prevalent where these abound most. But this is not the
case in actual experience. On the other hand, it has been
found that where damp abounded, there invariably did
plague more abound in Bangalore. The rat and the rat-
flea do doubtless pass on the plague, but this effect is
secondary. They are victims, and not the cause of plague.
So far as observation by some in Bangalore has gone, the
. primary cause of plague is something more than the rat.
There is a power behind the rat, which is greater than the
rat, where plague is concerned, and that may be described,
as a miasma caused by soaking fermenting damp in the
soil. It is a breach of a sanitary law. The plague is
generated in damp, and propagated from damp, so far as
the soil in Bangalore is concerned. The rat is a kindly
provision of Providence to warn the families of men when
the plague terror is approaching or passing over a locality.
The poor rat is a sacrifice, that man may take warning
and adopt measures of defence, so that the plague angel
may pass over and not hurt him, and that the primary
cause of the plague may be removed.
14. In Bangalore, plague has been greatly reduced in
42 Plague-Proof Towa Planning in
Blackpally, by the draining and drying up of the Miller’s
tank, but it has not yet moved from Knoxpet and Ulsoor,
and other places in the vicinity of the Ulsoor tank- This
will probably not be done till after the sacrifice of a few
more hundreds of lives. Unfortunately many Hindus
worship water, and cannot find it in their hearts to see a
tank drained.
15. The remarks now made are the observations of one
who had ample opportunities, but who does not claim any
scientific knowledge. He does elaim a sincere desire
to do what little good he can for his Hindu and Muham¬
madan friends, and so records these observations for the
kindly consideration of those better capable of dealing with
this matter scientifically. In the meantime the lessons
he has learnt he has applied practically in the construction
of Fraser Town in order to make it a plague-proof town,
as will be explained further on. While laboratory work
is very commendable, and not to be depreciated, observa¬
tions made amongst the plague-stricken, in their homes,
and amongst the surroundings of plague and poverty, may
be of some small help to the scientist in his laboratory.
In the meantime, the lessons learnt practically, have been
used practically in the construction of Fraser Town, and
have shown practical results, in having made that town
plague-proof, and the health resort for the sick.
16. In dealing with the mosquito as the means by which
malaria was propagated, it was not found sufficient to
merely kill the little pest or to screen it out. The investi¬
gators went behind and beyond the mosquito, and drained
ail swamps and breeding grounds, and applied remedies
to pieces of water that could not be drained. Just as in
Africa and at the Panama Canal, the sleeping sickness
and the yellow fever were traced to their source, and the
necessary remedies applied there, so also should it be with
the plague. There is no doubt that plague is a rodent
disease, and that it is communicated to man from the
flea of the rat or the squirrel, or the rabbit. But how
Bangalore, South India
43
and where do these contract the disease ? This should be
the object of research, and it is there where the real re¬
medies for the plague should be applied. Disinfection
and inoculation are all very good in their way, but they
are at best only protections and do not go to the root of
the matter. They do not strangle the plague miasma, or
the plague bacilli, or by whatever other name it may be
called, at its source, and to do this, its source and origin
must be first found. Except in Fraser Town, Bangalore
is not yet free from the plague. As already stated, both
Knoxpet and Ulsoor had it very badly last year (1913),
though the rat and the rat-flea were as prolific in other
parts of the town. This matter will be investigated
further on, after the increase in the drink habit in
Bangalore, and the fillip to primary education, the product
and by-product of the plague have been casually consid¬
ered. Whatever is stated here only applies to Bangalore.
Conditions will vary with the soil, but it may be conclud¬
ed generally, that the soil almost everywhere has some¬
thing to do in originating, intensifying, or moderating
the plague. Plague is made or marred by the soil. Man is
also of the dust, but his vagaries and inconsistencies were
so great, that he became the plague of the universe, and
would have been blotted out altogether, but for the new
life worked out for him in Christ Jesus, by which he is
born again of the spirit—a new creature in Christ Jesus.
So from the stress and sorrow of this other plague, new
forms and ways of living can be evolved. New sanitary
conditions forced on the bulk of the children of men, that
will raise them out of the gutter and the slum, and
give them a sort of sanitary emancipation. The world
just now is the age of the millionaire. The labourer
makes the millionaire. He slaves and sweats that a few
may be made rich. Cannot this millionaire age be suc¬
ceeded by one in which the labourer will make himself,
will not give his strength to the millionaire, but rather
use it to lift himself out of poverty and the dust, to a
44 Plague-Proof Tows PinmingT in
newer and higher form of living ? There is a great need
for this change, and with God’s help it can be done. God
does not wish that only a few men should be inordinately
rich, and others the plague-stricken of the dust. He
wants all his children clean and healthy and noble, fit
creatures of a great and loving Creator. The millionaire
is produced by the power of organisation, planning, and
combination. Cannot some great organisation of labour
arise, not to pull down the millionaire .from his self-made
pinnacle, but to raise the common labouring man, so that
he may have a just share in the fruits of his own toil and
live above the slum, and the dust and tbe plagne age ?
This is the message of the plague to tbe families of men.
May they hear its voice, and with God’s help emancipate
themselves. But this can only be done, when that great
curse of the poor, the drink habit is abolished, and the
rule of righteousness installed. “ Righteousness exalteth
a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.”
Bangalore, South India
45
SECTION III
Plague has Greatly Increased the Alcoholic
Habit in India
As already explained, the plague brought great sorrow
to the poor of Bangalore. With this sorrow and misery,
there was mingled a certain amount of fear. Most of the
people were terror-stricken. Friends and relations were
dying all around in large numbers, and none could state
who would be the next. In the midst of the comforts of
Paradise the serpent entered, and beguiled the parents of
mankind. It may therefore be judged that he would not
be idle in these days of calamity in Bangalore. It was
not, however, the guileful serpent on this occasion, but
some of the more subtle tavern keepers who were the
cause of trouble. “ Deink and deown your sorrows ”
was their advice. Others went even further, and with the
aid of would-be doctors who rose up in great numbers
during this time of stress, advised that alchohol was
a preventative against plague, saying, that those who
were half-drunk, were less liable to get the plague, than
those who were sober. Others again, went still further
than this, and stated that alcohol, by stimulating the
heart’s action, prolonged the life of those already seized
by the plague, and thus gave a chance for other remedies
to take effect.
2. Also, to secretly nurse their sick, and to hide them
from the searching eyes of the vigilant plague department,
required more than ordinary moral courage, and what was
defective in character, was made up for by the free and
continuous use of alcohol. The people were heart-sick
and terror-stricken, and alcohol had a siren voice of its
46 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
own, to charm and to entice to this form of cheer, and so
the poor and deluded peopleran madly to the liquorshops.
Drunkenness, both in men and in women, thus became a
direct product of the plague.
3. It is said that an ancient holy fakeer met the death
angel leaving Bagdad, and reproached it with the number
it had slain by the plague. The angel explained that the
plague had not taken many lives, but that the bulk of peo¬
ple died through fear, and the effects of fear. The poor
people of Bangalore were afraid, and it would have been
probably better, if this fear had made an end of them, rather
than leave most of them drunker debauched sots, useless
to themselves, and worse than useless to all around them.
4. It did not require much persuading to induce people
to go to alcohol as a plague preventative, the result being
that, not only in Bangalore, but in many other places,
people who lived sober and respectable lives, were, on an
outbreak of plague in that locality, induced to become
votaries of alcohol. And thus, very erroneously, through
the plague scare, intemperance increased to a dreadful
extent in India.
5. The spirit of alcohol unfortunately does not walk
alone. Thieving and lying and debauchery, are generally
his boon companions. Also when the drink habit is once
formed, it is not easily got rid of. Plague may slay its
victims and thus make an end of them, and they go
down to the grave mourned and lamented, but it is not so
with the drunkard. He, and worse, she, sink lower and
lower in moral degradation till at last their friends are
glad to see the end of them.
6. The effect of the drink habit, as the result of plague
in Bangalore, is that about 90 per cent of the poorer classes
are unreliable. Plagua and drink, acting and reacting on
each other, have fairly thrown the poor of Bangalore into
the arms of the enemy, and some strangers coming into
Bangalore to settle have had to leave the place as they
could not stand the demoralised servant nuisance. If
Bangalore, South India
47
this is the effect in other parts of India, where plague has
since appeared, what a lamentable curse it must be upon
a hitherto industrious and exceptionally temperate people!
7. The fallacy that alcohol is good for the plague cannot
be too strongly exposed. It does stimulate the heart, but
stimulation is followed by a reaction, which is generally
fatal to a plague patient. For this reason some doctors
consider it a poison in case of plague. There are other
stimulants which are not followed by a reaction and
collapse, but which stimulate and sustain at the same
time, and thus give a chance to a plague patient. But it
is not so with alcohol. Here the stimulation is followed
by reaction and collapse, which often mean death, and
therefore alcohol should be most carefully avoided. Oh
for a trumpet voice to proclaim this aloud in every Indian
town and village and in all vernaculars, so that the rumous
drink habit, which is following the plague scare, may be
for ever stamped out!
8. In the countries of Europe, the drink beverage is a
remnant of the barbarism of the past, and is now being
gradually reduced. But it is different with India. The
Indians were a temperate people. What a warfare they
may have once had with the giant of alcohol in pre¬
historic days is nowhere recorded—With the Indian,
when the countries of Europe found him drink of any
kind was a disgrace. Priests and people alike might not
indulge in the wine cup; caste, and custom, and the
Koran alike forbade it. But these things are now very
rapidly changing. A team of Indian sportsmen lately on
their way to England carefully avoided beef, but openly
called for ale. This seems to be the new spirit of young
India. An adaptation of the English Excise System has
been foisted on India, and yet there cannot be two coun¬
tries more diverse in their conditions so far as this subject
is concerned. It seems to be the fashion to think that
what is found suitable for England should also be £ood
for India, and so alcoholic spirits are manufactured under
48 Plague-Proof Town P lann i ng in
Government supervision, whereas, probably, in old India
of the pre-English days, it would have been a crime, and
involved ostracism, to distil spirits of any kind, and a
degradation to drink them. It is difficult for some to
realise that Indian methods are altogether different from
English, and India is best dealt with when treated in its
own way. Many things have been done in India for
which the English deserve the greatest credit and the
most sincere thanks of the Indian people, but this cannot
be said of its Excise System and its social habits itf wine
drinking.
9- A member of the Civil Service was deputed to study
the Excise Systems of England and Europe, and to adapt
the same in some modified form to India. The civilian may
have done his work well, but have the people of India
profited thereby ? The Excise ltevenues may have in¬
creased, hut the drink habit which before was a degrada¬
tion, has now been state-regulated. The mother country
and Europe are gradually rising out of the old pit of bard
drinking, and yet, sad to say, it is drawing India down¬
wards from a nation of total abstainers to one of moderate
drinkers. Where will the end be? It will not remain at
moderation. It is very easy indeed to slide downwards,
and India has started on this downward slide so far as the
alcoholic habit is concerned, and the plague terror is
helping it to go a little faster in this way, and is especially
influencing the peasant and working classes, the backbone
of the country.
10- An eminent Edinburgh Medical Professor, in trying
to explain the action of alcohol on the human machine,
compared it to the whip on a fagged horse. It does not in
any way add to the strength and sustenance of the horse,
yet it makes it go faster, though it is followed by a great¬
er fag and weakness immediately afterwards, and so it is
with alcohol at all times. It stimulates, without in any
way strengthening the mind or body, and is followed by
greater weakness.
, Bangalore, South India
49
11. The early settlers of America, it is said, took the
hard drinking habits of the Europe of those days with
them. In the new country, with less restraint, and
more affluence, these early settlers drank more heavily;
prosperity is a bad thing for the drunkard, as it only
supplies him with more means with which to indulge
the dreadful craving, and one social historian of that time
states that the male population of those early settlers
was fast becoming a nation of drunkards. This may be
a very pleasant condition for the man, but what about
the women and children ? They were the principal
sufferers, and it is said that the strong womanhood of
America stood up like an inspired goddess and declared
that this curse of strong drink must cease. All the
methods they adopted to achieve their purpose it is not
necessary to state, but they were sufficient to obtain their
ends, and the America of to-day is a more temperate land
than most countries of Europe. In London, the public
bars project themselves on the stranger at every turn.
In New York they seem to hide shamefacedly and must
be sought out to be found.
12. But what about India ? It has started on its down¬
ward course in the drink habit, and many think that it
will slide downwards very rapidly. Can its womanhood
deliver it from the dark slough into which it is drifting'!'
Is there any womanhood in India, as understood in
western lands? The females of India are generally bound,
from the child to the child mother, (a child of twelve is
often a mother) and with the peculiar fecundity of the
climate, the latter is soon endowed with a numerous pro¬
geny. She is a flower crushed before its bloom. Has she
any strength to rise to the rescue of the man ? Is it not
more likely that he will drag her down to the level of his
own depravity ? The outlook for the India of fifty years
hence to some appears dark indeed. Plague has given the
country a great set-back. Its social reformers are well
meaning, but have as yet achieved very little. To merely
S63—7
50 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
copy the European is not always a reform. India is
a distinct entity of its own, and cannot rightly develop on
a European model. It seems more prone to copy the
evil and to eschew the good that it can get from Europe.
As far as the drink habit is concerned, its womankind
cannot help it.
13. Europe itself is rapidly changing. The King-
Emperor has declared that his health can be drunk as well
in water as in wine. The Emperor of Germany, one of
the drinking nations of Europe, has openly proclaimed for
total abstinence. Cannot England, who has the best inter¬
ests of its Indian subjects sincerely at heart, treat India,
in its Excise System, as a total abstinence country ought
to be treated ? Cannot alcoholic decoctions of all sorts be
barreffat all State functions? If the State and its English
rulers set a proper example, the Indian subjects will follow
as a matter of course. The walnuts and the wine and the
speechifying after State dinners, are the only parts of the
public entertainment in which the Indian at present joins.
Cannot the wine be omitted? The King has declared that
his health can be drunk in water. Why then have wine ?
The Czar of Russia has openly proclaimed that alcohol
has added to “ The Weakness, Poverty and Econo¬
mic Desolation ” of t.he Russian people. Some radical
change has to be made by the stronger for the sake of the
weaker, and the State, at least, can bar all wine drinking
at its State functions, and the Native Rulers of India
will soon follow this lead.
14. The day when India was held by the sword has for
ever passed. When the British Government so far took
the Native Rulers of India into its confidence, and induced
them to raise and to maintain the reserve of its Indian
army, officered by both Natives and English, she, in a
manner, handed over the sword to India’s keeping. This
reserve force is regularly inspected and reported on by
England’s best Generals, and it is said to have attained a
degree of excellence such as the reserve of a great Power
Bangalore, South India
51
should possess. This force is daily increasing, and, if at
any time it should combine with England’s standing.
Native army, what a strong Indian Military force it will
make. Thus the sword has been voluntarily made over
to India by the statesmanship of England-
15. As rulers, the native princes of India have gone
forward in a very remarkable manner. Some of them
have shown special wisdom, enlightenment and enterprise
in their rule. Take Mysore as an instance. Would the
large English capital required for working the Kolar Gold
Mines have been attracted thereto, except by some broad
and wise State policy ? The harnessing of the Siva*
samudram falls of the Cauvery river has been carried out
at State expense, with the aid of American and Swiss
specialists, and has proved a wonderful success in many
ways. The Princes of India, more than any other class,
have benefited by the British administration of the
country. Most of them have been gently lifted up from
a state of ignorant semi-barbarism, and instructed in
enlightened modern systems of paternal Government. And,
what is more, they understand the people of India better
than a foreign Government, and can deal more effectual¬
ly with them. Other rulers are following the Mysore
lead. Mysore is no doubt very thankful to England,
from whom she has got her first lessons in enlightened
administration. The Mysore Excise System is modelled
after the pattern of what is being done in British terri¬
tory, and this again is an adaption of the Excise System
of England, an alcoholic drinking country. Cannot
English Statesman introduce into India something suit¬
able to a country the bulk of whose population were total
abstainers? May not the importation of all foreign liquor
he entirely forbidden? Cannot Government distilleries,
and all other distilleries in India be closed, and the
breweries, which have been mostly engineered by Euro¬
peans, be made to brew non-alcoholic beverages ? It is
said that in Mysore there was once a very conscientious
52 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
English Administrator, Colonel Dobbs, who felt res¬
ponsible to Grod for the well-being of the people in his
charge, and that he succeeded in excluding the Excise
Law, and in barring all alcoholic beverages from his
portion of the Province, to the supreme well-being of his
people. This good officer, though dead, yet speaketh.
Caunot his example be followed throughout India ?
Mysore official records will show how he achieved his
purpose,
16. Dr. Johnson said that even a dog will refuse to
drink wine, and what is not good for a dog cannot be
good for man. India fought its non-alcobolic fight in
the pre-historic days, and succeeded. Cannot England
allow it to remain in this condition, especially now when
the plague scare is driving so many of its sons and daugh¬
ters to alcohol as their supreme help ?
17. Nearly every one is indignant at the doings of the
militant suffragette. But there are many good and wise
women, who are not militant suffragettes, but who desire
the vote, not merely that they may be equal with man;
their ambition is of higher order. • They know the havoc
drink, in many forms, is working in the poorer homes of
England, how it is the curse of that fair land, and one of
their first acts would be to try to oppose the brewing inter¬
ests in the House of Commons, and to legislate so as to
purge the poorer homes of England from this great evil.
And yet here in India, a total abstinence people are being
gradually drawn into the vile meshes of the drink habit.
If the ancient caste system of India has helped in keeping
that country a non-alcoholic one, it will be better to per¬
petuate this system, with all its defects, than that its
gradual neglect, should introduce the silent conversion of
India to the drink habits of England and other European
countries.
18. In this connection it may not be amiss to repeat
what the great Abraham Lincoln said on this subject.
He says—“I think that the reasonable men of the world
Bangalore, South India
53
have long since agreed, that intemperance is one of the
greatest of evils among mankind.”
19. This chapter may here give an extract from German
statistics.—It has been shown that drink in that country
causes annually 16,000 suicides, 1,300 accidents, 30,000
cases of delirium tremens and insanity and 180,000
crimes. More than sixty per cent of the insane, fifty-two
per cent of the epileptics, forty-six per cent of the cri¬
minals, and eighty-two per cent of the immoral women,
are reported to have been born of drunken-parents.
This has so impressed the mind of the Kaiser who loves
his people and feels his responsibility, that it has made
him a convert to teetotalism.
20. Germany is an enlightened country compared with
India. Those who love India and its people, and who
feel their responsibility before God, should realise what a
dreadful evil the drink habit is going to be to this sunny
land and its countless millions, unless supreme efforts are
at once made to effectually stop it, without any regard to
loss of Excise Revenue. A happy and prosperous people,
are a country’s highest and best heritage and everything
done in India, its laws and its system of education, should
all have the one object of raising the people in Indian
lines, and not making them the copy of anything prevail¬
ing in Europe or any other country. Learn to know the
common people thoroughly, and then do what is best for
them as a whole, and not for any one class merely.
21. The last Indian budget (1913) has shown that the
Excise Revenue in India has risen from £ 4 , 300,000 to
.£8,200,000. What a total of misery does this mean for
many, many Indian families ! Cannot England wake up in
its moral strength and realise its responsibility ? God, in
the wisdom of a Providence which often man cannot
understand, has given England this ancient land, with a
civilization and a history which tbe modern mind cannot
yet comprehend. It has gone through great storms and
tempests. Ambitious men in the dim past have pillaged
54
Plague-Proof Town Planning in
and plundered il. Tt lias bowed its ineek bead to tbe
cruel conqueror more than once.
22. Wordsworl.il states that it required tbe rattling
chains of Itoman subjugations, to make the proud Druid
accept the humble message of peace, which has now made
England great, and she is daily growing greater. Her
sons are going forth to the remote corners of the earth
and forming new nations, which will soon be even greater
than the motherland.
23. But what about India? Bemnants of its ancient
architecture, and some things in its ancient agriculture,
show unmisiakeably that it, was once great, but it had
been robbed, and enslaved, and reduced to a condition
when it gladly welcomed the strength and protection and
peace of England. What is it receiving which :s going
to raise and ennoble it throughout ah future generations (.
According to Wordsworth, this was God’s purpose m sub¬
jugating England to ancient Home, and God has some
wise and good purpose in making India a, pare of the
great British Empire. Hot to lower it by the revenue
which may be derived from alcoholic drinks, but to raise
it, and to endow it with all that is best in tbe making of
a great nation. People from India who visit England
are impressed with the way most. Englishmen speak their
own language, there is so much of provincialism in tone
and accent. They come away with the idea that most
Englishmen cannot speak their own language correctly.
But these same Englishmen know other things which
are making England great, and it is these other things,
and not the aptitude to speak English grammatically,
which India has to learn. This leads on to the nest
section regarding the teaching young India is now re¬
ceiving from its great benefactor England.
24. In its heart of hearts the English administration of
India is not selfish. There may be individual English¬
men .with a disagreeable manner and a great idea of what
is due to them as members of the dominant race. But this
Bangalore, South India
55
kind of conduct may be met even amongst individual
Indians, and is not the character of British rule. England
sincerely desires to do what is best for its Indian people.
But an Anglo-Indian career is so short. Just about the
time when, after many mistakes, the people and their
wants are properly understood, the career is cut short,
and a new race succeeds. Compulsory retirement often
seems to be a grievous mistake, for a good man doing a
good w’ork should be induced to remain as long as possible
in the country. Very often, just when one has come to
the period when his work is of most value, forceful retire¬
ment awaits him and the mistakes of juniors continue to
arrest real progress. One can readily conceive the many
difficulties which surround this subject. On the surface,
it seems a great pity that just when a person has come to
the best years of his working life, and can be of most use to
the country, and when the people particularly require a ripe
experience and a knowledge of affairs, that the Anglo-
Indian’s, and even the Indian’s career, is suddenly cut short.
‘25. Some appear to think that the licences to sell liquor
should not be put up for competition and given to the
highest bidder. This, however, is at least a splendid
barometer to show the Government, if the drinking habit
is increasing or decreasing. If the bid is higher than in
the previous year, it will show at once that drinking is
going up. and immediate measures should be adopted to
prevent this. Others, again, consider that the licencing
authority should not be the Collector. The Government
is paternal, and should do what is best for its children,
and this best is not to drink alcohol in any shape or form.
The present Excise system should be taken up root and
branch, and all alcoholic manufacture and all importation
at once stopped- This may look rather radical, but it is
for the people’s good, which is the first consideration with
a benevolent paternal administration, and the result in
the increased happiness and opulence of the people, will
quickly show itself.
56 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
26. In South India the juice, or natural extract, from
the numerous kinds of palm trees can be made into a very
fine sugar, not unlike the maple sugar of America. In old
Hindu and Muhammadan prescriptions for medicines for
horses or cattle, if the medicines have to be sweetened, it
is always with the palm sugar, and not the cane sugar, so
that palm sugar is believed to have therapeutic qualities.
Yet this useful economical natural product, under the
supervision of the Excise Department, is turned largely
into a fermenting intoxicating beverage yielding a large
revenue. In speaking to the people who partronise these
drinks, they explain that it is good for the human consti¬
tution, a sort of natural vegetable milk. If this is the
case, would not the sugar have the same effect without
the fermenting intoxicant, or the pure juice out of which
the sugar is made without the fermentation. To the
casual on-looker, it appears as if the maxim is ‘ drink as
much as you like, so long as the Excise Department can
report a large revenue to the Government.’ Each tree is
taxed, and a good revenue derived. If revenue is so great
a desideratum, then tax each tree, but insist that the juice
is only to be used for making sugar, and must not be fer¬
mented as an intoxicant. The tax may be regulated
according to the market value of the sugar produced,
which may be of much less selling value than the ferment¬
ing intoxicant, but this loss can be recouped in many
other ways.
Bangalore, South India
57
SECTION IV
Defects in the Teaching in Primary and Secondary
Schools—the Bi-Products of the Plague
Ekom the overflowing Excise Revenue caused by the in¬
creased drink habit in Bangalore, which was due to the
plague scare, the Government have given liberal grants for
Education and Sanitation which have thus become bi-pro¬
ducts of the plague. This reminds one of an old excise
contractor. He distilled spirits for the Government under
its supervision and made quite a lot of money by this busi¬
ness. On being questioned as to how an orthodox Hindu
could embark on such a trade, he replied that he gave a
good deal of his profits away in charity and trusted that
this would remove the curses of the drunkards’ families
and also balance accounts in the next world. So the
Government from its overflowing Excise Revenue has
made liberal grants for schools and about twenty new
school houses are being erected for the poor in different
parts of Bangalore.
2. It is trusted that the teaching imparted in the new
schools will be for the real good of the people and not
the same as that given in the older schools, viz., ability
to pass crude examinations in English. If the object of
the schools is to impart as much useful knowledge as
possible in a limited time, then the present system of
primary and secondary education can hardly be consider¬
ed a success. To first teach children the smatterings of
a foreign tongue, which they learn more or less as an
effort of memory and cannot quite understand, and then
to attempt to impart other information to them through
58 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
this non-undcrstandable foreign medium, seems a great
loss of time and opportunity. The fertility of the Indian
intellect is amazing, and it is wonderful what a lot of
information it has picked up even under such discouraging
methods.
3. After deciding on the medium through which instruc¬
tion should be given and which, most people will think,
should be the medium by which the most knowledge can
be acquired in the shortest time. The nest thing to
be decided upon should be the nature of the teaching.
This, one would suppose, ought to be what will be most
useful to the students. To be able to recite whole pages
of Milton with a strong Scotch accent can hardly be con¬
sidered the most useful instruction for an Indian boy; but
one has sometimes witnessed this kind of performance as
the result of the teaching on the present system.
4. The medium through which au Indian boy can
acquire most information in the shortest time will natural¬
ly be his own vernacular. Even the three K’s can be
more easily acquired in this way than through a foreign
tongue. If the school aspires to something more than
this; then in village schools and in nearly all other schools
where most of the children are the sons of agriculturalists
elementary teaching on advance agriculture appears the
most important. Co-operation, seed farming, poultry farm¬
ing, dairying, sugar making, and other kindred subjects,
would form a most interesting syllabus of useful instruction
which the children of agriculturalists would be interested
in and absorb even as they take in their native air.
5. To fill their heads with history, poetry, and
geography, though these be very fine things to know, will
not be of any practical use. It is true that knowledge should
be acquired for its owij sake arid not for every day use,
but in a country which has a literature of its own, hoary
with age and rich in imagery, and, more than all, some¬
thing which an Indian can appreciate and enjoy, why go
and cram his always acute brain with a literature which
Bangalore, South India
59
he may learn by rote, but which will not add to the
measure of his joy in living. If work for half a day on
some practical occupation can be combined with instruc¬
tion in school for the other half a day, it will make school
more pleasant, and give a spirit of self reliance to the lads,
which nrere cramming all day at school and sometimes
homework at nights cannot impart.
G. It is the fashion just now to introduce European
sports like cricket, football, etc., into Indian schools.
This may be all very well in its way. One is not in¬
clined to join Kipling in designating such things as the
sports of “ Flanneled Fools.” But is it appropriate
to the Indian boy ? Would he not enjoy very much better
a ploughing competition, or a pecottah bailing contest,
or other sports which will be sport and practical in¬
struction combined ?
7. Life has to be faced, and life is a serious thing—are
the teachings in elementary, and even advanced schools,
so arranged and regulated that an Indian lad can make
the most of his school life ? Does it give him the right
sort of equipment for what is to follow after he leaves
school ? Does it make him most useful to himself and to
his family and to his country at large? It may qualify
him as an aspirant for Government employment! But
should that be the object of his teaching? It may have
been necessary in the past to supply the Government
with a certain number of qualified men to help in the
administration and many of these men have achieved
greatness. But this would have been increased a hundred
fold under a less foreign system. Now when the teaching
of the people is gradually assuming national dimensions
should not something more than the narrow groove of
Government employment be aimed^at?
8. The national work and employment in India is not
the Government service ; but agriculture. Millions of
pounds of sugar are being imported into India from
other countries- Even a place like Java is said to be
no Plague-Proof Town Planning in
greatly enrichiiig iteelf by importing sugar into ’India.
Whereas this country, if rightly directed, can, not only
raise enough sugar for its own use but can also greatly
emu h itself by supplying all Europe. This is only on8
oi many other agricultural occupations where a little
teaching will be of the greatest help to the son* of India
as a whole.
‘.I, One of the richest and most enterprising ryots in a
district was a man who did not know' a word of English.
Had he some teaching in the vernacular on the many sub¬
jects comprised under agriculture he would have become
something like our colonial millionaires. Some of the
best craftsmen in India were also men who did not know
English. If they bad to impart their know ledge to others
only in English, South India would be considerably poorer
under this English barrier. If the craftsmanship of India
is losing its ancient reputation the teaching in English is
one of the principal causes.
10. The Education of India as modelled by Lord
Macauley is out of date and also more or less like wbat
prevails in England; whereasi there cannot be any two
countries more dissimilar. England is one of the least
agricultural countries in the world. Its old cotters and
crafters and other agricultural labourers have emigrated
to the colonies to the enrichment of themselves and those
new countries and most of its other sons have gone to the
manufacturing towns. But India has no colonies and
very few manufactories. What are its children to do ?
Study English for employment in the Government service !
There can be nothing more absurd. A. naturally prolific
country but so dreadfully backward in the things that
make for the prosperity of it's vast populations !
11. To a stranger, the Italian soil seemed so thoroughly
cultivated. A kind of intense cultivation. Even a woman
could be seen at the plough. Whereas in England most
of the land appeared to he fallow; and yet the system of
teaching in this non-agricultural land is being foisted on
Bangalore, South India
61
India where most of the people live by agriculture. The
Italian while intensely cultivating his own country, and
making the most of his lands is also emigrating in large
numbers. At a place where the writer was staying in
America a new railway was being made. A sort of fellow
feeling induced him to go out and to have a talk with the
American Navvy. But what was his surprise to find that
all the earth workers were Italians who could not speak a
word of English or American. But poor India cannot
emigrate anywhere and, though she has no forced military
service, is not making the best use of her wonderfully
prolific soil and climate. Italy is importing potatoes into
Ceylon, whereas India its neighbour, if properly directed,
can supply half a dozen islands like Ceylon. In the new
impetus now being given by that energetic officer Sir
Harcourt Butler to an almost free and national kind of
education in India the real good of the greatest number
should have the first consideration.
12. Intense and advanced agriculture, and all the vari¬
ous industries and combinations that should go with
agriculture, will be for the best interests of the bulk of
the people. To raise sheep, and to export the raw hide to
Germany, is to enrich Germany and to impoverish India,
To dress and to tan the hide according to the newest
methods of tanning and to manufacture it into all kinds of
useful goods, which Germany can purchase if she likes,
will be to enrich India. And so with every other kind of
agricultural product. The sons of India are quick to
learn and to master all kinds of intricate machinery and
can produce the best kinds of manufactures from their
own produce. They did so in the past without machinery
and they can do so again with machinery, and India, if
properly directed, can eclipse Germany and most of the
other lands which have lately risen into industrial im¬
portance. And it can learn quickest and best if taught in
its own vernacular. Instead of which it is being taught
grammatical English and to compete for Government
C2 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
employment, while the real wealth and greatness of the
country is being trampled underfoot.
13. The Government have lately formed an Industrial
Department. Cannot all primary and secondary school
teaching be directed l»v this Department? It will be
more in touch with the larger requirements of the bulk
o£ the people and will know bow to meet them. A
high academically trained body of men like the officers of
the Educational Department may be very good for the
High Schools and Colleges but arc out of place and out
of touch where the large number of village and other
primary and secondary schools are concerned. It is like
a boy whittling sticks with a golden knife. Their
sympathies are with the higher education and with
teaching in English and they will try to fit ail elemen¬
tary and secondary students for the high schools and
colleges.
14. This may be very good m its way, but what the
country really requires are.betfcer agriculturalists, a training-
in advanced commercial and industrial methods, and the
fostering and advancement of the old craftsmanship of
India. All this can be done best and quickest and
cheapest in the people’s own vernacular, and by a Depart¬
ment who know the great resources of this varied land,
and by men who are not necessarily academically trained.
Instruction in the advantages of co-operation which the
Indians once understood will be of great benefit to the
poorer struggling class of people, and do away with the
village sowcar, who has taken the place of the old Pindarie
or village plunderer. When his occupation is gone, every
ryot will be able to eat the fruit of his own labour in peace
and contentment, and will seethatnt is to his best interest
to improve his patch of land to its utmost capacity for the
good of himself and family, and not to feed a rapacious
sowcar.
15. As.for Government loans under the land improve¬
ments act, these are too surrounded with red tape and too
Bangalore, South India
63
much in the hands of Government subordinates who,
more often than not are worse than the sowcar.
16. It may be asked why all this tirade about schools
when treating of the Plague ? Well, as already stated,
the present energy in primary education is more or less a
bi-product, due to the increase in Excise Revenue, of the
plague; and one who has mingled with the Indian Ryots in
Floods and Famines and at happier times, and who has
had a good deal to do with the Indian craftsman on large
city works, feels a tender regard towards them, and would
do wrong not to show wbathe considers to be for their best
interests, and the unsuitable teaching now being given them
with the best intentions. They are a polite lovable people,
but easily influenced for good or otherwise, and one desires
with God’s help to be of some little service to them in a hum¬
ble way by pointing out what appears to him Lobe impor¬
tant for their future welfare. The Government also sincere¬
ly wishes to do what is best for its Indian people ; and this
is an encouragement to those who know them well to res¬
pectfully ventilate their views for the information of those
in authority.
17. Many years ago, a missionary of some experience
was about to open a High School at his Station. He was
asked what he proposed to teach and replied, u just the
same as the Government High Schools. Why should not
our Christian children pass the Government examinations,
and obtain Government employment, and become Tabsil-
dars and Magistrates like the Hindus ?” And so this High
School, which has since become a College, is pouring forth
its stream of matriculates and graduates to join the great
river of competitors for Government employment. While
one or two may succeed, the bulk will be drowned in the
sea of disappointment and disqualified for most other
work. How can the Government from its attenuated
bosom find employment for the annual hordes of passed
students':’ On the other hand the land is being merely
scratched, and agriculture, the staple industry of India,
04 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
as conducted in other lands is not even understood in this
country. Its manufactures and trades, which modem
experience has shown can make it rich and great indeed,
and in which it once excelled, are languishing and other
foreign countries are making India the dumping ground
for their inferior goods. “When the people are misguided
and kept poor, handicrafts cannot exist, and so the old
craftsmanship of India is rapidly dying out. All this
under the mistaken craze for teaching English and com¬
peting for Government employment.
18. Very good material is thus being wasted and the
people and country impoverished. It is time to call a
halt and a right about in the educational policy of Gov¬
ernment.
19. Sir Richard Holmes in his life of King Edward the
Seventh refers to the “Active Hindu Agitation ” against
the partition of Bengal and states, “ The Apparent Mo¬
tive WAS THE FEAR OF THAT SECTION OF BENGALIS WHO
SEEK A LIVELIHOOD AS SERVANTS OF THE GOVERNMENT
THAT THEIR CHANCES OF OBTAINING APPOINTMENTS WERE
IN DANGER OF BEING DIMINISHED .' 7 And how Was this
agitation met ? By cancelling the partition aDd by
raising Bengal into a separate liovernment with many
more official appointments for agitating Bengalis. This
is wise policy for the present. But where will it end?
Will Briareus with his hundred hands be satisfied for
long ? According to the old legend will he not try to.
attack Olympus and to cast the Titans into Tartarus ?
And yet the Bengali is a docile grateful person. God has
endowed him with an acute intellect and the system of
Government education has diverted this strong intellect
into the narrow groove as a seeder for Government em¬
ployment ; instead of that broader Road the development
of the wonderful resources of his great country. If the
clever Bengali mind were rightly directed, he could make
his beautiful land, extending from the snows of the
Himalayas to the Coral sands of Cape Comorin, one of
Bangalore, South India
65
the principal suppliers of the economic wants of the whole
world, instead of being what it now is, the dumping
ground for the inferior goods of all foreign nations, while
its sons are scramblers for the crumbs that fall from its
master’s table. Change the system of teaching and then
India and her sons will soon take their right places amongst
the great nations of the world. As yet the educated
class is only as the froth upon the surface. Ninety per
cent of India’s dumb millions are agriculturalists, and it
is these who can be awakened by a correct method and
manner of teaching.
66
Plague-Proof Town Hanning in
SECTION V
The First Rule that Made Fraser Town
Plague-Proof
Afi’eb an interesting digression on the product, and
bi-product of the plague, viz., the increased drinking habit,
and the excessive Excise Revenue consequent thereby and
the additional grants to schools from this increased revenue,
the price of the demoralisation of a temperate people as
some consider it, it becomes necessary to go back to the
original subject of the plague itself, and to try to still
further explain the investigations and observations made.
Amid scenes of pain and poverty, death and drunkenness,
with an evil odour of want and wantonness all around, one
went from hovel to hovel in search of the cause of this
calamity. As already stated, one prominent fact presented
itself in almost every case. Whenever there was continual
damp and stagnation in any one place, there were sure to
be loud cries and lamentations, the result of the plague
visitation. It reminded one of the dreadful days of the
big famine of 1877. Whenever the loud growlings of
dogs were heard, there was sure to be a dead body which
had dropped by the way from disease or starvation.
Washings of all kinds in this Indian climate, if not
speedily removed, soon form sullage, and where this is
constantly soaking into the Bangalore soil, by some un¬
seen chemical action, fermentation is set up and a miasma
formed, and the plague let loose on the rats and the
people. To those who were watching, where these con¬
ditions existed, plague was invariably to be found.
Bangalore, South India
2. This was markedly the case in the poorer over-crowd¬
ed congested Indian parts of the town. One may con¬
sider it the result of insanitary surroundings, and this
had something to do with it. But it was also so in other
and better favoured places. To take an extreme case
in an opposite direction. The Mysore Residency in
Bangalore may be considered a place with the most
spacious grounds and with the largest open area. Yet,
even here, in the servants’ quarters, where the washings
from several of the servants’ godowns discharged into one
place, and kept continually soaking into the ground, even
there, in the most elect place in Bangalore, the plague
intruder showed himself, and the servants were immedi¬
ately scattered into small separate huts, with large air
spaces between them. Whatever maybe said of the demon
of plague, it must be stated, that he is no respecter of
persons. Hovel and palace are alike to him. Wherever
certain sanitary laws have been disregarded, there plague
life is generated in Bangalore, and tbe ugly one is an
unwelcome visitor.
3. In Bangalore, in the wet weather, when there is
most damp about the soil, there is also always most plague.
In the hot weather, when there is least damp, the plague
disappears. If the rat and the rat-flea were the sole cause
of the plague, and nothing else, the plague would continue
very much the same all the year through. The rat and the
rat-flea do not migrate in the hot weather. In fact, in the
summer season when there is less shelter in the open, one
would suppose that they would prefer to come into the
houses, and yet there is less plague in the hot weather.
Rats are said to leave tbe sinking ship. But Bangalore
is not in a sinking condition in the hot weather, it is just
the other way. The people eat and drink and sleep
more in the open in the hot weather than in the cold,
and there is more food thus scattered about to attract
the rat.
4 . It is said that the plague bacillus cannot stand the
68 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
heat, and dies out in the hot weather, aDd that the rat arid
rat-flea at that season are therefore not plague-infected
and cannot communicate it to man. This may be correct,
but does not represent all the facts. The chemical com¬
position of the soil has something to do with the plague
for better or worse, for in Calcutta, the plague is worse in
the hot season, and less during the rains. How is this
explained ? Does the chemical action of the wet and
damp on the soils of Calcutta dissolve, or set free,
certain constituents which are not favourable to the
plague bacilli, and probably destroy it ? The rat and
the rat-flea are very much alike in both Calcutta and in
Bangalore. Why then is there more plague in Calcutta
in the hot weather and less in the wet weather, and just
the opposite in Bangalore? What can be the reason ? The
plague demon, unlike some men, is not accustomed to
make a volte face like this for nothing. There is a reason
for its action. It is the result of something beyond and
behind the rat and the rat-flea, and that something is the
composition of the soil, which, in some cases, is the
mother and originator of the plague, and in other cases
its destruction. It may be asked how then did the plague
come into Calcutta, and how has it retained a hold in that
city, when the soil of the place is against it ? If the con¬
stituents composing the soil, can be kept damp and moist
all the year through, then probably plague can be extir¬
pated from that town. The chemical action of damp on
the soil in that place, unlike Bangalore, is against the
plague bacilli. Calcutta is a great centre of trade and
commerce, and the plague germ must have been intro¬
duced from infected places. May be the rat and the
rat-flea were brought in there in this way ? But its effect
on that city, unlike Bangalore, has been checked by the
chemical action of wet and damp on its soil.
5. These remarks are intended to call the attention of
the scientific investigators of the plague bacilli, to an
examination of the composition of the soils in different
Bangalore, South India
parts of India, if they have not done so already, as this
has an important bearing on the severity or otherwise of
the plague in different places.
6. The ancient city of Madras may be mentioned as a
further illustration of this contention. The plague regu¬
lations were very carefully drawn up in that City, and
still more carefully and rigidly carried out. But Madras
is a great centre of trade and commerce, and the plague
regulations do not insist on the examination of every bag
of grain and other things imported into it from plague-
infected places. People were examined, but not material,
so that the plague microbe must have been introduced
into Madras continually from plague-infected places, and
yet Madras has remained immune from plague through
all these years. It is known that plague-infected people
have gone into Madras and died there of plague, and yet
it has not spread—Other towns of less commercial import¬
ance, have had plague regulations as carefully consid¬
ered as those of Madras, and as carefully and rigidly
administered, and yet plague has entered those towns and
done no end of harm, though the towns were of less com¬
mercial importance, and there was less danger of becom¬
ing plague-infected through trade and commerce. Madras
cannot be considered a sanitary model of a city, while it has
the stagnant Cooum, a huge sewer in its midst, and with
its congested and filthy places like Chintadripet and Tripli-
cane. Madras may be considered a very insanitary town,
and yet it has been free from plague. What is the
reason ? It has the rat and the rat-flea, if anything worse
than most other towns, and yet the plague demon has not
harmed a hair of the heads of any of its dirtiest people,
living in the most insanitary places, with open gutters,
and filthy surroundings all about. Are the people of
Madras better than those living in other places ? Has
their righteousness protected them ? The police records
do not substantiate this. What then is the reason that
the plague has not located itself there ? Those who know
70 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
Madras well can explain this. The drainage into its
Nallah and water courses brings muddy silt with it. Has
this been examined ? Those who know Madras intimately,
state that if this were carefully examined, it would be found
impregnated with sulphur, and that it is the sulphur in
the soil of Madras which has protected it all these years
from the assaults of the plague enemy, which has been
knocking in vain at its gates.
7. On a comparison between Bangalore, Calcutta and
Madras, it has been demonstrated that though the rat and
the rat-flea are the same in all these places, yet the plague is
very different. In Bangalore it is most severe in the wet
damp season. In Calcutta it almost disappears in the wet
months, and is worst in the hot season. Id Madras it is
not known at all during the hot or dry seasons. This
shows that the plague in these places is not due to the rat
which is the same in all the places. It is due to some¬
thing else, and that something is the soil. Experiments
should be made with the soil in each place and the under¬
lying facts and causes discovered. The rat and rat-flea
are contributing causes, and channels of communication,
and a merciful provision of Providence that man may
know by the dead rat, that he has to arm himself against
the plague fiend. How many have escaped from the
plague by the warning of the dead rat 1 And how many
who did not heed the warning have died !
8. In Bangalore, by close observation, it was found
beyond doubt that continual damp and soakage into the
soil let loose certain constituents in the same which
formed, or stimulated plague and, that to remove or to
avoid this evil, the first and best thing was good drainage.
As soon as this was known, Mr. Harris, the President of
the Corporation, adopted measures to at once drain the
worst portions of the Native town. He very wisely
treated the matter as urgent, shouldered the responsi¬
bility, and started a cheap but effective drainage of the
parts of the town where plague was worst. This prompt
Bangalore, South India,
71
action had an immediate effect on the ravages of the
plague in those localities, and it is believed that many
hundreds of precious lives were saved thereby. To have
prepared a regular drainage scheme on the most advanced
system, and to have obtained regular sanction from the
Corporation, would have taken time, and where the lives
of the people were at stake, there was no time to be lost,
so that Mr, Harris’ prompt action in this matter cannot
be too highly commended. It was not talk and red tape
that were needed, but ready action, and help for the
common people, at the time of their greatest need. And
the effect was quick and apparent. It showed itself by a
sudden drop in the plague in the area drained. On one
occasion a bad part of Shoolay was drained and its effect
watched. The plague there had ceased, but intimation
was brought of one case in one of the houses drained, and
this house was carefully examined. It was a tenement
house, with a number of rooms surrounding an open court¬
yard. All the rooms and courtyard had been properly
drained, and this drainage passed under one room to the
public drain outside. This portion of the drain, under
the room was clogged, and the sullage had lodged here
and soaked into its surroundings, and the case of plague
was in this room, caused by the clogging of the drain.
Observations like this all over the town showed without
doubt that bad drainage and soakage of even clean water
into the soil of Bangalore caused plague.
9. This experience led up to the first and most impor¬
tant rule observed in making the new Extension or Fraser
Town a “ Plague-proof town,” viz., that it must be under
all circumstances quickly drained and kept quite dry.
That it should not be possible for it to keep clamp even
during the wettest season. To securely effect this, all
its principal roads were countersunk about foot below
the surface of the natural soil and the side drains placed
about 1£ foot below the lowest part of the roads. The
result of this arrangement was to convert the building
72 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
sites on either side of the roads, into elevated natural
platforms, a kind of hill tops, when compared with the
lower countersunk roads and drains, and from such places
rain water flows away very quickly and damp is thereby
effectually excluded. When damp is excluded, plague
loses its primal cause and origin, and the town becomes
plague-proof, though the rat may not be excluded. Tbe
explanations regarding the effect of damp on the soil in
Bangalore, and the way the soil does influence plague,
were necessary to elucidate the necessity of this rule. It
has tended, together with the other rules which will be
explained, to make Fraser Town plague-proof, and the
expectations regarding it have been fully realised.
10. If circumstances should so conspire that a sack full
of plague rats or plague fleas were to be suddenly let
loose in Fraser Town, to fasten on each person living
there, they may all get the plague, and may even all die,
but the plague will also die with them, because there is
nothing in the conditions of the town to sustain it. In
this way Fraser Town is plague-proof, and the first and
most important reason is that it is designed as a dry and
well-drained town. The same rule may not apply to
other towns, not to Calcutta for instance. It will depend
on the chemical composition of the soil, and on the effect
of damp thereon, whether damp will generate the plague
as at Bangalore, or will destroy it as at Calcutta. Obser¬
vation and experiments can alone decide this.
11. But from observations made in Bangalore, there is
every presumption that the condition and chemical com¬
position of its soil, has some marked effect in the generation
of tbe plague bacilli, and in the construction of Fraser
Town, the correctness of the observations were put to
practical proof and were confirmed. The other rules
which contributed towards making Fraser Town, both
healthy and plague-proof, will be explained in the next
chapter.
12. There is one other little matter which should be
Bangalore, South India
73
noticed. The site of Fraser Town has a very good longi¬
tudinal fall. About two feet of the upper soil is a more
or less loose loam. Below this is a bed of gravel. The
surface drainage cannot very easily penetrate through the
harder gravel below, and s6 runs longitudinally through
the upper more-porous soil. When this meets with an
obstruction like a building, the capillary effect is to make
it rise through the walls of the building, and to make the
floors damp. The countersinking of the roads prevents
this effect, and it was further lessened by making all the
longer axes of thabuildings, that is their longer dimensions,
parallel with the slope of the ground, so that the building
might present a minimum obstruction to natural drainage
passing through the upper soil. This may appear a very
little matter, but it is attention to minutiae that contri¬
butes to the success of an undertaking.
Plague-Proof Town Planning in
71
SECTION VI
An Explanation of the Second, Third, Fourth
and Fifth Plague-Proof Rules
The second rule, viz., the building of all basements to
be of stone and about 11 foot high, with good cement
pointing of the joints, is an easily understood one, and
requires no previous explanation. This will lead to the
complete dryness of the house. The countersinking of
the roads keeps the grounds below and around the house
quite dry. The raising of the basements of the houses
and building them of stone will add to the dryness of the
houses. Bangalore has a small rainfall aDd fine natural
slopes, yet it is surprising how sodden and unhealthy an
undrained area may become. This raisingbf the basement
] J foot high, building it with the splendid granite rubble
for which Bangalore is noted, and pointing the joints
with good cement, it is trusted will also keep rats and
other vermin from burrowing into the basement walls,
and will make it more difficult for them to enter a house;
the place will thus be defended from damp from below,
and from vermin around, a sort of fortified house.
2. Stones are cheap in Bangalore, so that it was not a
great hardship on the builders to carry out this rule,
though some often tried to reduce the full height of 1J foot.
The native, as a rule, does not care for a high basement.
It disagrees with his conventional ideas of privacy. The
whole object in the construction of Eraser Town was to
elevate the common people and to accustom them to a
newer and more healthy manner of living without adding
materially to the cost of the house, In all these rules one
Bangalore, South India
had not to forget that the buildings were intended primarily
for the poorer classes, so that every rupee added to the cost,
meant taking it further out of the reach of the poor man.
On the other hand, it had to be commercially successful.
The capitalists who were induced to build, were good and
philanthropic gentlemen, who were prompted with a most
sincere desire to help their poorer brethren. But those
who were urging and encouraging them into this business,
felt responsible that they should get their live per cent in
rertk-^or the funds invested, so that great wariness was
necessary in building for the poorer classes. To build
sanitarily and in a plague-proof manner, and yet to see
that the very good capitalists who risked a great deal of
money on this new town got back a fair return for the
money expended ; these three interests, the poor man,
the kindly capitalist, and a fair return for all money in¬
vested, had to be carefully considered, not by the good
men who were literally pouring out their wealth on this
new venture, but by those who were behind them.
3. Some may say, why not have made the basement 3
or 4 feet high ? Yes, this may have been sanitarily better
than 1J foot, blit some one was bound to be the loser
thereby. One capitalist who built more houses than any
other, did make his basements 3 feet high, and was pre¬
pared to face the loss in rental caused thereby. The
houses should not be taken out of the reach of the poor
man, and if rented below their money value, the capitalist
would lose. A medium course had therefore to be con¬
sidered and a height of foot was adopted as sufficient
for sanitary purposes and also as not making the house too
expensive for the poor man, by this the kindly and good
capitalists would not lose financially, though it is believ¬
ed that many were willing to forego a suitable return for
their investment in a laudable desire to help the poor.
This sentiment though very good and much to be praised
was not sound business. It was from the first the desire
of those who were initiating this improvement that it
Plague-Proof Town Planning in
should be run on sound business lines, and yet be a
sanitary model and a plague-proof towD.
4. The third rule was that all floors were to be of
stone slabs or of tiles or of some other hard material,
which a rat could not burrow a bole through or vermin
of any kind find a ready lodgement in. This rule many
builders considered rather a hardship, Tbe orthodox
Hindu considers that a best floor is one smeared with
cow-dupg. This does look a dirty habit, but it is hoary
with Hindu tradition, and to be in sympathy wffih the
people one had to look at things with Hindu eyes and yet
by kindness to lead them to better things; so it was diffi¬
cult to get stone or tiled floors put down which the owners
asserted would be smeared with cow-dung. Some said
that tbe best vermin destroyer was the cow-dung smear.
That the Hindu sages understood its virtues, and that it
was almost a part of the Hindu religion, and a sort of
offering to the sacred deity of the cow, to smear its litter
over tbe floors of a house. Such arguments seemed un¬
answerable. And yet it was pointed out that the dung
smear did not keep out the plague microbe, that those
who used the orthodox daily dung wash, died as much by
the plague as those who did not use this wash, that the
English people who looked with loathing on this dirty
habit, were those who were almost entirely exempt from
tbe plague, and that in the building of this new town
a conflict was being'waged with the plague fiend, not for
the benefit of th# English, but almost entirely in the
interests of the poorer Hindu and the Muh’amffiadan, and so
almost against their religious convictions, and their better
judgment. About 75 per cent of the buildings in Fraser
Town were floored with stone or tiles or cement and made
rat proof and vermin proof.
5. The holy Brahmin is said to be twice born. Once
from the face of Brahma and once again from the belly of
the cow ; he cannot be holy without this second birth.
How the cow came to be associated with this second
77
Bangalore, South India
birth, those skilled in ancient mythological lore may be able
to explain ; the legends of Greece and Rome are modern
when compared with those of India. This is mentioned
to show how much the orthodox Hindu had to surrender
when he agreed to give up the mud floor and the cow-
dung smear for the more modern stone and tiled floor in
buildings intended principally for Indians. One good
thing the plague has done ; it has shaken the faith of the
Hindu in his ancient semi-religions habits of the past and
in barbaric mandarams or incantations which were
said to cure disease; and it has reconciled him a little
more to modern methods of living and healing disease.
6. As already stated, about 75 per cent of the new build¬
ings had rat proof and vermin proof floors. Bazaars had
to be erected in many places. Both the Hindu and the
Muhammadan showed keen commercial instincts, and it
required some effort to restrain the desire to erect bazaars
in preference to houses. It was wished to confine all the
bazaars in one place on the open courtyard system ; or a
modification of the arcade systems of Europe and America,
but the Executive had to give way to the wishes of the
people in this respect and to locate the bazaars at con¬
venient places in almost every street. It was insisted
that all bazaars should not only have good stone floors,
but also have stone skirtings ail around the interiors of
each room and store and this was carefully carried out.
7. The first three rules have now been considered in the
making of a plague-proof town in Bangalore, viz., to
countersink the roads about 1} foot below the level of the
natural soil, and to thus elevate the building sites on the
sides of the road into natural platforms. Second, basements
of buildings to be of stone cement pointed and about II
foot above the natural ground level. Third, stone or tiled or
cemented floors, vermin proof through which rats could
not burrow. The fourth rule requires some little pre¬
paratory explanation. The land in Fraser Town was
divided into one-acre plots, and each acre into 20 building
78 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
sites for small houses for the poorer classes of people, and
into 10 parts for those a ht'le belter off, i.e., 2,178 sq. feet
for the smaller houses and 4,350 sq. feet for the larger ones.
Out of this area, only l was to be built on, and § kept
as an open space all around the house. For the smaller
houses therefore 726 leet would be building, and 1,452 open
area all around. In the larger houses 1,452 sq. feet would
be building, and 2,904 sq. feet open area all around. Bo
that both the smaller and the larger houses would all be
surrounded by an open space. The area for building T pay
appear rather small when compared with European stand¬
ards, but it must be recollected that these houses were
primarily intended for the poorer class of people living in
the congested areas. They are there contented with one or
two rooms of about 15 x 10 sq. feet each, and sometimes
two families would occupy this space. The areas given to
these new houses were decided on after carefully measuring
up the spaces actually occupied by tbe poor in the congest¬
ed parts of che town.
8. It should also be remembered that the climate in
Bangalore is very temperate and that an Indian family
spends most of its time out of doors. The open area around
each house besides being very sanitary will allow of this
healthy out of door life with a certain arnoubt of privacy.
In modem times, when garden cities in England and
Europe, and College settlements in America, are all being
designed with open (Ireas around each house this would be
considered an ordinary sanitary improvement, and it may
be asked how it helps to make a house plague-proof-
9. To explain this, things that actually occurred during
the plague epidemic will have to be mentioned. During
one of the first severe outbursts of the plague the golla
street of Ulsoor, where the milkmen live, suffered very badly.
It was then noticed that the plague spread very quickly from
house to house, but only on one side of the street. The
houses abutted on each other, and all the houses on one
side of the street had the piagne very badly, but not one
Bangalore, South India
79
house on the other side. It looked as if the plague microbe
or miasma followed the line of least resistance, which
was the abutting house. Had the people not been removed
enbloa, it would have gone to the other side of the street
also, but up to the time of their removal it had not crossed
the street, and from this incident, it was presumed that
an open area all around each house would not only be a
general sanitary improvement but that it would also
contribute to making that house plague-proof. So, that
the jf«rth rule in Fraser Town to make it plague-proof,
was that only £ of a building plot should be built on, and
g should be kept as an open area all around the building.
10. Besides being plague-proof, this marked a great
improvement in the general conditions of Indian life. It
is no more necessary for little children in that place to play
out in the streets or in the gutters. They had their own
yards. And this habit of living safely out in the open
most of the day will have a very great effect in the improve¬
ment of the general health of the children. The ad¬
vantages of the open-air treatment are now everywhere
admitted and the children of Fraser Town can have it all
the time. Land in Bangalore is so cheap that it does not
increase the cost of a bouse very much to have a strip of
open ground all around it. Most of the land on Fraser
Town was acquired at a cost of less than Rs. 200 per acre,
or Rs. 10 per building plot, and considering the advantages
in so many ways of this little open area around a house,
it would have been most unwise to have built on the old
system of one house abutting on the other. Independent
of the plague, in the usual infantile diseases, like measles,
whooping cough, mumps, etc., contagion is confined and
limited by one house being isolated from the other, and
the general health of the whole town improved thereby.
11. In carrying this out in actual practice there was some
difficulty. Some of the purchasers of plots of lands did
not understand why they should not cover it entirely with
building. The land was theirs, and they felt that they
*
80 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
had a right to build over it all. The rule first started was
■J building, and open area, but on the contentions of
some of the people, the building area was increased to £
and the open area decreased to All the time work
was going od, from the beginning of the planning to
the completion of the building, a very watchful eye
had to be kept open to see that this rule was strictly
enforced. And this watchfulness will have to be con¬
tinued, for even now addition will be slyly made by some;
if it can -be done with impunity. On several occpsjons
additions not shown on the sanctioned plane, <x other
alterations increasing the areas of the construction, had
to be reluctantly removed. The advantages of this new
method of arranging small buildings is freely admitted,
and the craving of adding one small godown, or a dog
house, or fowl house, should be resisted, for the dog or
fowl house can be speedily enlarged into something else.
Blaekpally and the other congested native portions of the
town, from old plans, were less crowded at one time; but
as families increased additions were slyly made often
with the secret assent of subordinate officials ; and this
will be repeated in Fraser Town if the utmost systematic
vigilance is not adopted and strict penalties enforced.
12. Every room in a house had windows or ventilators
opening into the external air, hut windows and venti¬
lators are easily closed. This was found to be the case
in JBlackpally and the other congested parts of the town.
The tenement or other houses had a liberal supply of
windows, as probably enforced by the Health Department
but all these were kept carefully and securely closed, and
in many cases were quite covered with cobwebs showing
that they were not even occasionally opened. Some
better method of ventilation had therefore to be consider¬
ed. Something that would be beyond the power of the
people in the house to close or adjust, and also something
that would afford continual ventilation both day and
night, and yet not cause, draughts. The plague microbe,
Bangalore, South India 81
like the poor in the congested areas does not like venti¬
lation.
13. This led up to the 5fch and last plague-proof rule,
viz., that all roofs should be of the Mangalore tile. A pot¬
ters’ village was quite near to Fraser Town and the usual
country tiles could be got there both easily aud cheaply,
but they were carefully excluded, and only the more
expensive Mangalore tile insisted on, and every house in
Fraser Town is roofed with this tile. It may be mention-
cd^tljat what is called the Mangalore tile, is of the old
Romaic pattern introduced into this country by the
Germans. It is a water-proof tile, but is not air-proof.
It is an interlocking tile and all its joints are open. No
cement or mortar is used in its setting and not even nails.
The air passes freely through the open joints, and gives
continual ventilation both day and night without causing
draughts. The vitiated air of the room also passes freely
out. The people in the house cannot close these joints,
they are too minute; and yet not so small but that
heaven’s sweet etherial air can pass freely through them
from one side of the roof according to the direction of the
wind ; and the internal vitiated air can pass out through
the open joints on the other side of the roof. And thus
a room is kept splendidly and continually ventilated in an
almost natural manner.
14. Its effect as a good ventilating tile was illustrated
during the early days- After a certain number of houses
were completed in Fraser Town, permission was given to
begin demolishing in the congested part of Blackpally.
ltao Bahadur Annaswami Mudaliar, c.i.e., very kindly
allowed the people thus evicted to live in his new houses
in Fraser Town free of rent for 6 months. They seemed
very happy in these new and clean houses, but after a
few weeks complained of jaw ache and face ache caused
by the wind. They stated that though all the doors and
windows were closed the wind yet somehow came into
the houses and gave them these aches. This showed that
*
82 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
tHe tiles in the roof were doing their proper work in the
way of-ventilation, and very soon the people from dark
and ill-ventilated Blackpally got accustomed to this new
and healthy way of living. Other illustrations of the
strong roof ventilating properties of these tiles can be
mentioned, but enough has been stated to show that they
contributed in making the houses in Fraser Town well
ventilated, and therefore sanitary and healthy and plague-
proof. Also they are so formed that they afford no lodge¬
ment to mice or other vermin. , >
15. The five rules which made Fraser Town {^ague-
proof may now be recapitulated. First and most import¬
ant in Bangalore is the countersinking of the roads.
Second —liaised basements of stones pointed and 'grouted
with cement. Third— Stone or tiled doors. Fourth —
Open spaces around each building and Fifth —Mangalore
tiled roofs to the exclusion of country tiles and terracing.
These rules also make it the most sanitarily erected town
in all India.
1G. In the next section, a further reference to another
aspect of the plague will be considered. For the plague
has more than one indirect contributing cause. It is one
of those diseases which calls aloud for both sanitary and
social reform, for a regeneration of old ideas and old
methods of living aud even dressing, and amongst the
most important of these is better housing and furnishing;
and this cannot be attained without better economic
conditions, ability to earn larger incomes, and thus to
obtain what some consider sanitary luxuries, all of which
are more or less anti-plague provisions. In parts of
Asiatic Russia, there is always more or less plague, and
there the economic conditions of^ the people are most
backward. Germany must be given credit for the won¬
derful way in which its economic and commercial condi¬
tions have improved in the last 25 years. It has made
that people great and rich at the expense of most other
nations. This in spite of compulsory Military Service,
Bangalore, South India
83
Cannot India with its enlightened Indian Princes try in
some measure to imitate Germany? With its hoarded
wealth, no compulsory military service of any kind, and with
the peculiar natural aptitude of its people it ought to pro¬
gress economically ; sanitary improvement will naturally
follow and plague which now appears a permanent insti¬
tution, will say its last good-bye to India for ever.
17. In holding up Germany as an example to India, it
must be clearly understood that only the wonderful im-
prq’' : e unents in its economic conditions are referred to.
Its commercial expansion is only a natural complement
to this condition, Both have to progress simultaneously,
or there will be no outlet for the manufactures due to
its economic advancement. While these improvements
can be held up before India for imitation, the action of the
rulers of that great country should also be mentioned as a
warning to the leaders of India. The German himself
when not intoxicated with military pride is a good fellow,
a patient, plodding and provident person. But his rulers
have drunk their inspiration from another spring to the
undoing of a splendid people. In trying to make their
country a great military infernal machine to satisfy politi¬
cal ambitions they have destroyed the fruits of a nation’s
industry. Intoxicated with the national wealth this plod¬
ding intelligent industry was producing, theyprojected and
planned out great political ambitions to the undoing of the
splendid race committed to their care, and soon the tramp
of millions of feet from India and Egypt and South Africa
and Canada and Australia and the Islands of the sea will
be heard in the streets and towns of Germany, to the
paralysis of great economic industries. It is trusted that
India will rush in to fill up the industrial vacuum caused by
this great paralysis, and that the leaders of India will take
warning from the failure of the political ambitions of the
leaders of the German nation to curb political ambitions,
and to use all their energies in developing economic condi¬
tions, and in raising the status of living in the whole of the
Plague-Proof Town Planning in
84
Indian nation; better housing, better furnishing, better
food, and improved sanitary surroundings in all the avenues
of life. Then only will the plague be conquered, and
plague conditions cease to exist in all this fair land. The
present dreadful results of the Political Ambitions of the
leaders of Germany should cry aloud to all the educated
leaders of India to shun politics in all form and shape,
as it is not possible to state into what dire pitfalls it may
lead an advancing nation.
48- An Indian Expeditionary Force is now on its w^y to
Europe. A somewhat similar army left Europe many
centuries ago with Peter the Hermit for the East. This
army failed in its main object of delivering the Holy Land
from the Saracens, but it returned to Europe with other
precious knowledge which has enriched European life ever
since. It is trusted that the Indian force after helping
to subjugate Germany will also return with other wisdom
which will enrich and elevate all Indian life, and raise the
Indian army above the level of the old sepoy lines. This
will be a better achievement and do more permanent good
to the whole of India than the military help it will have
afforded to the British Empire ; and anything which tends
to elevate the Indian people will be a plague prevention.
Bangalore, South India
85
SECTION VII
Some Plague Experiences and Deductions
Therefrom
The rt^, rightly or wrongly, is associated with insanitary
surroundings and thus in a manner fits in with the plague.
At best it is a child of the soil and abounds in filthy and
neglected localities, and in most things that are vile and
objectionable. Its connection with the plague is therefore
not surprising.
2. But it is different with the squirrel. It is a thing of
beauty, a child of the light and of the air. The squirrel
is associated with gardens and orchards and trees and
everything that is pleasant. It lives on nuts and fruits
and is formed by nature to be clean and undefiled; and
not to tread the earth but to walk along arboreal paths-
Its call to its mate is the music of the garden and more
cheerful than the song of birds. It avoids the congested
native portions of the town, and abjures all filthy surround¬
ings. Its nest and its home is on the trees. It nurtures
its young away from the maddening crowds and seems to
court the winds and the storms. It is the antithesis of
the rat in its ways and manner of living, and in the kindly
feelings it awakens in the human breast. It can be tamed,
and becomes a great pet.
3. Yet it is a rodent, and by something in its nature
is subject to the plague just as the rats are.
4. How does this beautiful open air creature contract
the plague. Not through the flea. Though very agile and
springy, the flea laden with the plague microbe can hardly
spring to the tops of trees. The rat and squirrel may
Plague-Proof Town Planning in
infect the flea, and thus propagate the disease among
men. But how are they infected in the first place?
5. Damp on the Bangalore soil causes fermentations
and chemical changes which seem to originate an nndefin-
able something, doubtless microbic, which is attracted to
rodents of all description. Some thing with probably a
visvina, a kinetic energy, which drives it down to the rat
hole and there infects the rat, and the sickened creature
surprised and agitated reaches the upper surface to die
there, and by its infected fleas spread the disease tp-joan.
Sometimes the rat dies in its burrow, but in meat cases
with its nose upwards. The same energy or attractive
power which appears to drive this something down the
rat hole to affect the rat, seems to draw it upwards to the
tree tops to fasten its stings of death on the lively squirrel
which may also contract the disease on the surface of the
ground, or it may be by both. The rodent appears to act
like a magnet to this undefined something, gaseous or
molecular, this minute microbe which is infecting the
rodent and causing the plague in Bangalore. To kill the
rat, and to drown or destroy the rat-flea, is not enough.
It may mitigate, but will not extirpate the plague germ.
6. In constructing Fraser Town an original and effec¬
tual method was adopted, as already explained, by which
damp and fermentation are prevented. It has shown good
results, over and over again plague was introduced into
the little town from the surrounding places, and the
patients even died there, but that was all. Whenever
there is plague about, a rush is made to Fraser Town and
the germs of the disease carried in there, the infected may
develop the disease but it dies with them. Plague has
been proved not to be infectious and Fraser Town has
substantiated this fact, for those who have taken the
plague in there have not been able to infect the place.
7. It is claimed that having succeeded in keeping the
place dry, was, as far as the Bangalore soil is concerned,
the same as keeping it plague-proof. But there are places
Bangalore, South India
87
in Bangalore which cannot be kept dry. Wbat about
them? Have the plague experts any suggestions to offer;
except the killing off of the rats and the rat-fleas ?
8. May one who only claims to have a very intimate
experimental acquaintance with the plague, make so bold
as to offer suggestions, one who is not a scientist., but
who has merely looked about and observed? It has been
already stated that Madras is free from the plague through
some composition in its soil. Like Fraser Town, plague
has qftgn entered there from outside and plague patients
have als^ died there ; and yet the town is free of the
plague. The germ cannot live there. It is a flat badly
drained place. Its want of drainage, unlike Bangalore,
has probably been its best plague-proof protection. It
has been surmised that the soil is impregnated with sul¬
phur ; and crude sulphur is stated to contain an infinitely
small proportion of arsenic as an impurity, so small as
not to do harm, and yet probably sufficient to kill the
plague germ or to prevent its growth-
9- Cannot the damp places of Bangalore and other
places like Bangalore, be artificially saturated or impreg¬
nated with crude sulphur or sulphur mixed with carbon
or lime, or other things which chemists will understand,
in an unexpensive way. Skilled and careful scientists
will know how this should be done. Many experiments
will have to be made and of different kinds with different
sorts of soils. Chemical knowledge and experiment will
solve the problem, and the plague can be met in its own
den and destroyed there before it has a chance of infecting
the rodent. The rat may die, and probably will not be
missed if it ends there, but not so the little Indian squirrel;
the lively beam of light in the Indian garden.
10. In the grounds of the Mayo Hall, far away from the
native quarters of the town and beyond all congestion,
stands a huge solitary Ficus tree, the home of many beau¬
tiful fascinating squirrels. The tree stands far away from
the habitations of men, the nearest house being the Engi-
88 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
neer’s OUice where people work only during the day and
which remains empty at night. During the first great
epidemics of plague in Bangalore, though this grand old
Bicus is solitary and alone, yet the plague somehow
found its way there and the pretty little squirrels died.
11- One little fellow made use of the parachute qualities
with which nature has endowed them and whether in
mute appeal for help, or in mute warning, fell at the
Engineer’s feet and died there. About the same time one
of the men in that office contracted plague and diec^How
came the plague in this open place. The man niay have
been infected in his own house or in the congested native
part of the town or from the flea of the squirrel, but how
came the squirrel with its open air manner of living to be
plague affected in this open space ?
12. What is going to be now stated may appear absurd
to some, but it is mentioned in good faith, and as the result
of repeated observation, and is not a haphazard opinion,
viz., the peculiar travelling propensity of the plague germ.
As already observed, the plague in Bangalore, is believed to
originate from the fermentation due to the chemical action
of damp and stagnation on the Bangalore soil. This
fermentation gives rise to some form of invisible life, and
this nameless something, is endowed with the power of
travel and invisible motion, whether thismotion be caused
by something within or outside the object itself, the mo¬
tion is a reality and can be seen by the sort of pathway
it forms in the dead rats and mice and squirrels along its
route.
13. It is not merely in congested insanitary localities,
but right out in the open from one congested place to the
other it has been observed more than once and the path¬
way followed. It does not travel very quickly, but
deliberately and fatally. In the healthier open loca¬
lities. except smiting the vermin already mentioned, it
does little, or no harm, but works havoc in the congested
places, where sanitary laws have been violated, and the
Bangalore, South India
89
ordinary rules of public and private health neglected. Its
wrath extends from the vermin to the people and im¬
mediate evacuation and a thorough cleaning are found the
best remedies. This travelling propensity of the plague
germ may account for the plague in the solitary Ficus tree
in the compound of the Mayo Hall.
14. Another experiment is suggested. Cannot a lot of
sullage be allowed to soak in any one place in Bangalore
and rats in a wire cage located near by? In time the
fomentation from the soil, will probably form that some¬
thing >tnd de.velop plague in those rats. A similar ex¬
periment may be conducted in another place, and some
crude powdered sulphur, or some other simple and
inexpensive substance added to the soil, and it may be
observed how a set of caged rats will fare in this place.
To rest satisfied with the rat and the flea as causes of the
plague is not enough. The plague life is behind and be¬
yond them and its cause and origin have yet to be dis¬
covered. In the olden days, during the plague in London,
meat was said to have been hung out in the open air and
to become quickly putrid by the action of the plague life
in the air.
15. The freedom of Madras from the plague infection is
a sort of index finger showing that the large city, by no
means of sanitary perfection as malaria and cholera hassars
indicate, can yet by some means be kept plague-proof.
Its best friends will not state that its plague regulations
have accomplished this. To claim this will be to blame
ether towns, which had regulations strictly administered.
Towns not so much exposed to infection as a large trade
centre like Madras, and where yet. plague entered and
abode and carried away its hundreds of victims.
16. Some may say, if plague attacks vermin in open
grounds just as it does those in the congested native
localities, why then do not the English people die just as
the natives? They would if the infected rats and squirrels
were allowed to enter their houses and to die there, and
863—12
90 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
the plague .infected fleas were allowed to nest on the
floors and to crawl about on the inmates.
17. One English girl who had a pet squirrel, and nursed
it during its illness, not knowing that it was suffering
from the plague caught the infection very badly. Another
English girl slept and studied in an almost rat proof room
with a good basement and a stone floor. But not far
from the outer entrance to the room was a mud compound
wall riddled with rat boles. The rats evidently had free
access into the room and she contracted the plague though
the house was one with a large compound. The rttt and
the rat-flea are no doubt the channels of communication
by which humans get the infection, but the root cause
■and real origin of the disease are beyond the rat and the
rat-flea, and all human efforts should be directed to
ascertaining and to removing this. Another remarkable
peculiarity about the plague is that it frequently shows
itself in the same house. After the first attack the house
is evacuated and thoroughly disinfected and cleaned and
rat holes closed, and yet in the next year’s outbreak of
plague it shows itself again in the same house. If the
occupants changed their habits and prevented stagnation of
washings in the backyard this would probabiy not occur.
18. If the five rules already mentioned and explained are
carefully noted it will he found that besides being intended
to make the place plague-proof, which they have done,
they are all rules which will make the place up to date
sanitarily according to the newest methods now in
operation in different parts of the world. This, combined
with the fine situation, has made Eraser Town not only
a plague-proof town blit also a health resort; and many
convalescents suffering from different forms of disease
have resorted there from distant places; and after a resi¬
dence for a few months have been greatly restored to
health and vigour. The best and highest good it has done,
and is doing, is that it is teaching the poorer classes of
Hindus and Muhammadans a new method of living. It is a
Bangalore, South India
91
great improvement for these people to live in well ventilat¬
ed houses with open areas all around them. ’ It is against all
their old ideas of living hudled up together. In the olden
days when the Pindari was about, and the robber chief
and the village gang of free-booters, and when life and
property were unsafe it was necessary for their own safety
for people to live very closely together and thus to secure
each others protection. But those days are now happily
past, there is security everywhere, and Fraser Town is
teaffhfng the poorer classes of people that they can live
safely and securely apart from each other. As already
stated the liberal ventilation provided was too much for
the first batch of people removed from the congested
areas to Fraser Town ; but they are now becoming accus¬
tomed to these better and more sanitary conditions of
living. It is not necessary for children in Fraser Town
when out of the house to play in the streets and in the
gutters. They can toddle about in their own yards in
health and safety, and when it is considered how much of
Indian life is spent out of doors, it will be understood how
beneficial the little open spaces around the houses are to
the health cf the little children of that place. These
youngsters will grow up strong and healthy and will form
the beginning of a stronger and better race of men and
women. In this and in other respects, Fraser Town will
become, and is becoming, a model for improvement in the
housing conditions of Indian life; and when improve¬
ments start in one line of life, they do not generally end
there. Social reformers are generally content with talking
and advising ; but in Fraser Town a large reform is prac¬
tically carried out and the people are learning to appre¬
ciate and to enjoy it. The children of that place will
never go back to the old congested ill-ventilated honses of
their forefathers. It -h raising the Indian man and
woman from the native pareberry and practically setting
them abreast with more advanced civilizations; and all
this together with making the place plague-proof.
92 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
19. The remarks made about the plague, its origin, and
its ways it may again be stated, are those of a very ordi¬
nary person who claims no special scientific knowledge,
but who has gone in and amongst the afflicted poor with
a great longing and desire with God's help to be of some
practical use to them; and the rules on which Fraser
Town has been built are the result,.
20. He finds fault with no one and is very thankful to
the Hon’ble Mr. Stuart Fraser and to others who gave
him the opportunity of putting these rules into practical
shape and the test of time has been in their favouP,
21. The fire of London js believed to have extinguished
the plague in that place, but those who kept a careful re¬
cord state that it lingered on for seventy years longer. It
was up-hill work but finally it was cast out root and
branch from that fair land with the hope and expectation
that it will never return again. The improvement in the
economic conditions of England and in the better housing
which resuited therefrom was one great contributing
cause, and so it will be in India. The poorer class of
people, the bulk of India’s millions of population, must be
lifted up. They are now in the mire and the dirt of igno¬
rance of the simplest sanitary rules. It is not Decessary
to remove them from their present humble occupation
but to improve the economic conditions; and thus to im¬
prove the people themselves. The teaching of English, a
foreign language, is not necessary in this titanic work ; on
the contrary it is in a way hindering it. The people should
be instructed in their own language, in their own villages.
22. There should be a sort of new educational mass
movement, in which the improvement of the economic con¬
ditions of the whole of India should be aimed at. A good
deal of preliminary translation work will be necessary but
there are large numbers of English taught young men
simply wasting for w’ant of occupation who can be em¬
ployed on this preliminary business, and can become
heralds in this new manner of teaching. When economic
Bangalore, South India
conditions are improved, and a new era of wealth and
prosperity dawns on India, its sanitary methods of living
will flso improve, and plague will find its occupation gone
and will finally disappear for ever^from the face of India ;
and the weeping and the wailings it has caused will only
be remembered as a bad dream of the night.
94 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
SECTION VIII
Describes How Congestion was Relieved in the
worst Overcrowded Localities
A reference to the plague should not be conducted with¬
out explaining the original way in which the very congest¬
ed Indian portions of Bangalore were opened out. In
doing this the old history of the Province of Mysore will
have to be briefly considered.
2. In the olden days, before the British or Muhammadan-
conquest of Mysore and while it was governed by its an¬
cient Hindu Bajas, large parts of the Province were divided
up amongst a number of Poligars or petty Chiefs. Each
chief had his fortress, dominated a number of fertile vil¬
lages, and rendered Military Service and collected revenue
for his Sovereign. They retained their own irregular
horse and foot soldiers and war elephants, and kept up all
the pomp and circumstance of barbarian lordship. These
Chiefs were often at variance with each other, and some
even quarelled with their own Maharaja. Under such a
system of Government the condition of the common people
can be better imagined than described. It was bad enough
to be plundered and looted by their own Poligar and his
high-handed soldiers, but there was always the danger of
a neighbouring Poligar pouncing down on a smiling vil¬
lage and carrying away its ripened crops and its cattle
and often its women folk. The ryot had to be both soldier
and citizen and lived with the plough in one hand and a
sword or spear in the other. It made a hardy and war¬
like race, but bred a sort of disregard for other people’s
property and there was continual turmoil in the land, often
95
Bangalore, South India
might was right and very few could call anything their
own. The heel of the oppressor pressed very hard on the
common people in various forms.
3. Under such a system it will be understood how a
brave but unscrupulous man like Hyder Ally rose from a
common soldier to he the Sultan of the whole of the
Mysore Province. Mysore was a bear garden and Hyder
rose to be Chief keeper. His son Tippoo Sultan was too
busy with foreign conquests outside the limits of the
My%>rc Province to introduce anything like a settled and
enlightened administration within it and so Poligars
throve, though many were at times immured in the
dungeons of Seringapatam.
-1. When the British conquered the Mysore Province
and made an end of the Muhammadan usurpation, Colonel
Wellesley (afterwards the Duke of Wellington), the first
British Resident, opened out the gates of the dungeons
of Seringapatam and gave freedom to the imprisoned
Poligars. It was very easy to restore the old Hindu
Maharaja to his ancient throne in Mysore; but it was
not so easy a matter to keep him there. The turbulent
Poligars had to be subdued and brought into some order.
It is said that one of these smart gentlemen raised the
standard of rebellion and gave trouble for about two years
before he was finally broken.
5. To keep the Maharaja on his throne and to gradually
introduce an enlightened and settled Government into
Mysore a permanent British force was necessary. What
is now known as the Civil and Military Station of Banga¬
lore was then assigned by the Maharaja for the purpose.
It was to be under direct English Administration and
soon became a large English settlement but primarily
Military. From it Military expeditions were sent out as
required to all places in South India and returned to
Bangalore after accomplishing their objects.
6. In ancient Indian warfare the camp follower was a
very prominent feature. For one combatant, there were
96 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
often half a dozen followers. There were no railways,
not even roads in those days, so that all the impedimenta
of an army had to be carried by men and women and on
oxen, even the Commissariat had to be carried; so that
the numerous but necessary camp followers had to be
located and controlled to be ready at hand immediately a
Military expedition was required. The old Pindari and
the Maharatta horsemen on their fleet ponies understood
the value of a rear guard action and often tried to cut
away the long stream of camp follower from the main
combatant body ; thus even to be a camp follower requir¬
ed a sort of Military spirit and the ordinary cooly did
not make a good one. In locating the Military in the
assigned tract the camp followers had therefore to be
considered and places assigned to them. Thus “ Pilka
Cherry ” was the place granted for the grass cutters and
syces. “ Bamboo Cherry ” the place where the stockade
and facine makers were located; for these things were in
great use in ancient warfare. ‘‘ Chupper Cherry ” where
tbe mat makers were settled, etc., thus each class of camp
follower was granted a separate location in the Station
and this formed tbe foundation of the present Indian sec¬
tion of the town of Bangalore, it is this section which has
become so congested and was the principal seat of the
plague.
7. When first laid out everything was doubtless done
very nicely. But camp followers like other classes of
native servants have their cousins and their aunts and
other numerous hangers on. In India, families also in¬
crease very rapidly, and hut was addedl to hut, mud hovel
to hovel, till what were at first well laid out localities
soon became dangerously congested and insanitary, and
plague slew its victims here by the hundred and the
thousand. As already stated the wail of sorrow that came
from the descendants of the ancient servitors of the
British Government was dreadful; and all through a pre-
ventible disease, in a comparatively modern town direct-
Bangalore, South India
97
ly under British Administration, where a better condition
of things would be expected.
8. A census of the congestion in these different Indian
localities of Bangalore was made and was found to vary
from about 250 to 300 persons per acre. The next ques¬
tion was how to remove the congestion in the cheapest
and most effective manner ; for till this is done the pub¬
lic health of Bangalore will always be unsatisfactory.
The English soldier cannot be always tied down to Bar¬
racks. He will have to walk about sometimes and often
this takes him into the native portions of the town. Also
the Indian servants to the English people live in these
parts and carry contagion with them into the English
homes of Bangalore. It was seen that no scheme for the
permanent improvement of the health of Bangalore could
be successful without giving the Indian sections of the
town some consideration. The English were more or less
well looked after ; and at worst are capable of taking care
of themselves- It was the native portion of the town
that should form the base of any large scheme of sanitary
improvement; so it was decided to erect three new ex¬
tensions of the town solely for natives and to open out
the existing congested Indian localities.
9. How the first of three extensions was carried out
has been already explained. It may be interesting to
know how the opening out of a small portion of the
Indian sections of the congested town was effected. A
frequent method by which this is done in other places is
to widen out the principal streets and to acquire and to
demolish the houses on the sides thereof. These sites on
the widened roads are sold at a profit and new palatial
residential and business buildings erected thereon. Eor
an example; an old street say about 25 feet broad is
converted into a wide boulevarde about 100 feet wide;
and for about a hundred feet on each side of the same the
old houses are acquired and demolished and these sites,
the value of which has been greatly enhanced by the
863-13
98 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
widened street, are sold at a profit and new palatial
buildings erected thereon. The widened boulevarde lets
in a strong current of air which sweeps through it, for
spectacular effect such an improvement is very impress¬
ive. But to step out of the wide boulevarde into the
side streets is more often than not to step into a closely
congested native bustee, or other very objectionable con¬
gestion, where the lower order of the native population
reside and sicken and die in all their primitive insanita¬
tion. « e
10. To avoid this, and to touch the sore at its worst
point, the Collector Mr. Harris and the British Resident
Colonel The Honorable Sir Donald Robertson were taken
on to the tops of the highest houses from whence they
could get a sort of bird’s-eye view of the places below;
then it was found that the congestion was worst well
behind the principal streets. The mud hovels were here
packed so closely together that it was almost like a rabbit
warren, the entrances to these hovels were in all kigds of
little turns. It was apparent that any scheme of Sanitary
improvement should give first attention to these portions
of the Indian congested areas. Light and air were shut
out and fermenting damp and stagnation all about. They
were not fit places for stabling horses or even for housing
pigs, and yet men and women and little children were
making their habitation here. In the scheme for the
Sanitary improvement of the Indian portions of Bangalore,
provision was first made for the removal of the worst
hovels in the most congested portions. This immediately
let light and air into the surrounding huts where they were
most wanted.
11. On one occasion, the Honorable Mr. Stew'art
Fraser was taken over the mud roofs of these hovels and
was able to walk for some distance in any direction over
the roofs, so closely were they packed together. In this
instance all the mud huts in the place were removed and
an interior open square formed and connected with the
Bangalore, South India
main road. On the three sides of this open space small
bazaars were erected, thus relieving the public roads of
this nuisance. It is believed that these two methods will
give the maximum degree of sanitary improvement in the
places where it is most required and at a minimum
cost. They give no spectacular impressive effect as a
widened boulevarde would do; but the common people
obtain the best advantage in the way of light and air
therefrom.
J2, The modus operandi is as follows :—Decide on a
sectiomof the congested area to be improved and make an
enlarged plan thereof showing every house and hovel.
The good well built house to be coloured in lake, the tiled
ones light red, and the mud hovels in amber. This
enlarged plan shows both the portions where there is the
most congestion, and the quality of the houses forming it.
Pick out the worst houses in the most congested places,
and try to arrange so that they may be connected with
each other and form little open spaces letting in light
and air into these places. Make a tracing of the first
plan showing the houses to be removed in black. This
will at a glance show the proportion of the area to
be removed with the area left untouched. The removal
of about one-third of the population in the congested
section was the standard proposed, this plan will show the
proportion and effect of the removals and opening out pro¬
posed. Another tracing may then be made showing the full
effect of the completed work. How the new open spaces
should be connected with each other and with the nearest
roads, drains formed, and new lamp posts and water taps
fixed. The full effect of the improvement in letting in
light and air will be seen in the last "plan. There will be
nothing spectacular in all this but the maximum of good
will be done to the people at a minimum cost.
13. The next thing to be done will be to bring out an
estimate of cost of the improvement. A tabulated state¬
ment is prepared showing the number and name of the
Plague-Proof Town Planning in
100
houses, their area, and their rent, the Municipal assess¬
ment which is based on rental, and the amount of twenty
years rental plus 15 per cent for compulsory acquisition.
This will give the maximum legal amount to be paid as
compensation for each bouse to be removed. By forming
panehayats of the leading people in a locality to arrange the
purchase, houses could often be bought with the owners’
consent at much below this amount. These mud huts cost
very little to build and were rented at a rate quite dispropor¬
tionate to tlieir cost. Taking this into consideration the
panehayats were able to arrange with the people»to sell
their houses at much less than the twenty years rental. For
the two years that this operation was in progress in no one
case did the people appeal against the compensation paid
them but were cheerful and happy over it showing the
advantage of working with people through panehayats of
their own leaders. A saving of fully ‘25 per cent was made
in the compensation paid by adopting this method of work¬
ing, and best of all, the people most affected were happy
and contented. The Government owes some gratitude
to these unpaid panehayats for their gratuitous help in
this matter ; and it is regretted that their names were not
recorded and brought prominently to notice.
14. All the methods here explained are more or less ori¬
ginal and have been most effective. There was mutual good
feeling and trust between the people and the executive,
and when this is the case the most disagreeable but neces¬
sary work can be got through without any friction what¬
soever. It emphasised the good nature of the Hindu and
Muhammadan common people when wisely handled.
Though the forcible acquisition and demolition of houses
is a disagreeable work and was done very economically ;
yet the people affected, and the executive carrying out the
work, became the greatest friends and their intercourse
was always very agreeable.
15* It ought to be mentioned that the worst and most
congested parts of the native town were done first.
Bangalore, South India
101
Colonel The Honorable Sir Hugh Daly, the Besident in
Mysore, and Surgeon-General Sir Pardy Lukes, Director-
General, Indian Medical Department, when touring in
Bangalore were taken through the parts of the native
town which it was next proposed to open out; the
method by which this was to be done was explain¬
ed on the spot and the congestion viewed from some
of the higher houses; detailed plans were also shown
and the gentlemen agreed with this original method of
removing congestion and of sanitary improvement for the
native portion of the town. Through the wisdom of the
old founders of Bangalore there is no congestion in the
English section of the town. The most crowded parts
thereof have not got a population of more than about forty
persons per acre. The average is less than about ten
persons per acre so that, when plague is completely
effaced, Bangalore with its splendid temperate climate and
cheap living will continue to be pre-eminent,ly the settling
place for the English from all parts of India.
16. The method of going behind the streets amongst the
crowded hovels and removing the. worst huts there and
letting in light and air where it is most required as already
stated affords most relief where it is principally required ;
but on the other hand does not lend itself to any specta¬
cular effect, as wide boulevardes flanked with new handsome
buildings do. In some cases where funds are available,
and it is profitable to do so, both systems may be com¬
bined; but in a non-commercial place like Bangalore the
system adopted appeared to be the most suitable.
17. Before passing away from this subject a word of
commendation must be given to the Hindus and the
Muhammadans from whom houses bad to be acquired.
Dealt with wisely through their own leaders, people whom
they trust and respect, they showed themselves to be most
tractable, not obstructive in any way, but hearty and
helpful whenever called upon to assist. If rubbed up the
wrong way or if brought under the influence of unscrupu-
102
Plague-Proof Town Planning in
lous leaders what a lot of trouble and how much hindrance
these same people could have given. And what is true of
Bangalore may be considered to apply to all India. If
there is trouble anywhere it is not dne to the people but to
some bad leaders. Just now in the bazaars one hears of all
kinds of ridiculous war rumours. There are some foolish or
designing leaders deceiving the people. It will be wise to
stop this and the best way to do so will be through
panchayats of reliable leaders of the people. Not neces¬
sarily English-speaking Indians, for often those whoddcfcnot
know English have the most influence with tha people.
Successful traders of all descriptions who may not known
word of English have often more influence on the com¬
mon people than those who are well versed in the English
language and read the English papers.
18. While glancing at this subject one more thought
presents itself. In referring to the hard drinking habit of
some of the early settlers of America, it was shown how
the womanhood and the motherhood of that fair land rose
up in their inspired strength and declared that this vile
barbarism of ancient Europe must cease in America ; they
succeeded in making it a comparatively temperate land.
As one reads of the terrible slaughter now taking place in
Europe by which the strong young manhood of nearly all
its nations are being sacrificed at the gory altars of a few
misguided and ambitious men, one wonders what the
strong womanhood of Europe is going to do. It may be
very exciting for the men to go and fight and be killed ;
but what about the widows and the orphans and the deso¬
lated homes they are leaving behind. However kindly
the State may be, nothing can fill up the void caused by
those that are gone. Cannot the strong and enlightened
womanhood of Europe and of all the world rise up in the
majesty of suffering and of sorrow and declare that all
wars must cease ? Can they not form themselves into one
great federation, without reference to nationality, for
the protection of their common manhood ? The position
Bangalore, South India
103
of tbe women in the world is daily growing stronger.
They are also naturally more vigilant than men. And
their vigilance committees should be able to at once detect
any schemes by individuals or by nations which may ulti¬
mately lead to war, and to nip them in the bud. They
are now very patriotically sending their men to the wars
with the greatest self-sacrifice, can they not with equal
resolution organise to banish all wars from the face of this
fair world ? With systematic organising aud planning
an^some little self-denial, and with God’s help, this can
be done. Even our blessed Master would not feed tbe
five thousand without the aid of tbe five loaves and the two
small fishes from His disciple and so, with the aid of the
devoted and organised womanhood of the world, He can
perform this greater miracle, the banishment of all war
from the face of His own creation. This is a digression,
but the appalling slaughter now taking place in Europe,
and the heart-breaking and desolation it is causing, call
aloud to a God of love that wars may cease and the
answer comes back “ Give me the organised devotion of
the women as the disciples of old gave Me their five loaves
and two small fishes, and I will make all wars to cease.”
The God of the Christian delights in working wonders
through weak instruments, and if the organised devotion
of the womanhood of the world will put itself into God’s
hands, He will say to the present gruesome conflict
“ Peace be still” and this peace will continue.
19. Now to go back to the congested parts of Bangalore,
after tbe removal of the worst huts and hovels and the
letting in of Heaven’s bright light and fresh air into the
places where they were most required. The owners of
the houses that remained were asked to improve them
with stone floors and better ventilation and Mangalore
tiled roofs and a great number willingly responded. The
constant unceasing ventilating effect of a Mangalore tiled
roof has been already explained. The wind passes freely
through its open joints, and there is no stuffiness in a
104 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
room thus covered. With the improvement effected by
the Government, and the alterations made by the people
themselves, the sanitary conditions of the Indian portions
of Bangalore are being greatly changed and also those
portions are made somewhat plague-proof.
Bangalore, South India
105
SECTION IX
Historic. Praise Due to Capitalists for Building so
largely in a New Locality and on New Rules
Some have remarked and asked why most of the houses
in Fraser Town have been erected by rich capitalists ; and
why was not the poor man induced to build his own house
to live in? It may be stated that every possible effort was
made, and many concessions granted, to induce the poorer
class of Hindus and Muhammadans to do this.
2. To avoid their going to sowcars for help, Government
loans on easy terms were offered to them; but very few
took advantage of this. When part of the congested old
town was being demolished and compensation paid to
them, Mr. Moore, the Collector, gave the owners of those
demolished houses sites in Fraser Town expecting that the
compensation money would be re-invested in buildings
in that place. But it was not so. Most of those men
allowed the sites granted to them to lapse to the Govern¬
ment rather than build there.
3. It must be recollected that Fraser Town at first
was only raggi fields and the poorer man, with just
enough money to build his own house, probably did not
care to risk his little all in building in such a place ;
so people who desired to build their own houses avoided
Fraser Town. If one had waited for them to change their
minds the place would probably still be raggi fields.
4. To induce even capitalists to build there, the lead
had to be given by an Englishman, Mr. Bindley, a retired
railway foreman. After he gave the start others, Hindus
and Mubammad&ns, rapidly followed. One cannot praise
. 863—Id
106 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
too highly the spirit evinced by these gentlemen. They
literally poured out their wealth on an undertaking the
results of which were at that time uncertain. Very few
could then have stated that Fraser Town would be a
financial success.
5 . There were many things against it. It was intended
primarily for natives and they as a rule are averse to
living away from the bazaars and centres of life and
business in which they are all more or less interested. It
was on the way to, and not far from the Hindu cemetery
and Hindus are superstitious, they said that to livq there
would be to go half way on the road to the cemetery, that
is on the road to death. The filth depot was then not far
from the site of the new town and tbe odours from this
filthy spot used to blow right over it. The depot was
abolished only after the town was built.
6. Under such adverse conditions but yet seeing that
the Resident in Mysore,, the Hon’ble Mr. Stuart Fraser,
was very much interested in this scheme and that Mr.
Moore, the Collector, encouraged it as being the only means
by which the congested areas could be relieved and the
poor people there helped, they came forward, and spent
small fortunes in constructing new buildings on raggi
fields with very little hope of adequate financial results.
7. The rules by which it was hoped to make the place
plague-proof were also strenuously carried out, and
these were all new and untried and quite different to
the usual manner of building, yet this did not discourage
them. They built loyally and rapidly according to these
new peculiar rules. Where basements 1J feet high were
demanded, Mr. Annaswami Mudaliar made his little
houses with basements 3 feet high ; showing how eagerly
they wished that this new experiment should succeed. It
all meant money and they did not spare this ; sufficient
that the poor could be helped and the plague defeated.
Such kindly, disinterested and enlightened action is not
often seen for none of these men are millionaires. All of
Bangalore, South India 107
them are hard-working and making their living by the sweat
of their brows. They did not give from their abundance,
but from comparatively limited means, and with small
probability of an adequate return ; yet they have built
what, in the words of The Honorable Sir Harcourt Butler,
at the first all India Sanitary Conference, “ Is the only
plague-proof town in all India,” and what is equally
great, they inaugurated a practical social reform in teach¬
ing the poorer classes of Hindus and Muhammadans a
m3vv»and better method of living which will affect the life
and hoalth of the whole nation if followed everywhere.
8. It is respectfully suggested that a stone obelisk be
erected at the crossing of the two principal roads with
their names inscribed thereon—Mr. Lindley, Eao Baha¬
dur Mr. Annaswamy Mudaliar, c.i.e., the Honorable
Khan Bahadur Hajee Ismail Sait, Mr. Rutna Singh, Rao
Bahadur Mr. Maigandadeva Mudaliar, Mr. Kumaraswami
Naidu, and some others, so that coming generations may
know the names of the men who erected this model little
native town for the imitation of all India. In this it has
not been talk but downright cash spending and very hard
work. Many of them neglected their other important
money earning business and could be seen, late in the day,
supervising these neat little cottages.
9. Mr. Rutna Singh did more. He managed to induce
a large number of the artizan class to occupy his buildings,
Gold and Silversmiths, until it looked as if his part of the
town were going to become a small native industrial centre.
All these families from the worst part of the congested
areas were living apart in neat little cottages with
small gardens around each, a new feature in Indian life,
bringing health and happiness, social reform and uplifting
with it.
10. At the risk of being tedious it may be necessary to
revert again to the part played by the rat in the plague.
There is no doubt about the plague being primarily a rat
disease, in very much the same way as enteric is princi-
108
Plague-Proof Town Planning in
pally a disease that fresh young Englishmen nnd English¬
women are specially subject to. But would it be concluded
from this that they are the cause of enteric, they are only
the victims.
11. The cause is behind them, and is being overcome
by Government dairies, and greater care in the conservancy
of the native dairies and in all dairy productions, and this
is mitigating enteric. So also with the plague and the
rat. The rat is not the cause; it is merely the first victim.
12. The real cause of the plague is behind the rat and
should be discovered and destroyed. An attempt has
been made in constructing Fraser Town to do this and to
practically overcome the first cause of plague in Bangalore.
The result so far, after a trial of about seven years, has
been encouraging. Before condemning wbat has been
advanced let further experiments be made. Enough has
been stated to show that there is a wide field for more
minute investigations; beginning with mother earth her¬
self and extending right up to the tree tops; from the
bottom burrow of the rat hole to the top-most waving
branches of the huge Indian Ficus tree. The plague just
now is master in all this realm and he has no right there.
He is an intruder and all who care for India and its dumb
millions should endeavour to expel him. It will be
interesting to know how many people have up to date
died of the plague in India and how much has been
expended on plague prevention.
13. It ought to be here mentioned that the executive
who had the laying out and the supervision of the con¬
struction of Fraser Town on the new lines already describ¬
ed treated these philanthropic builders with the greatest
sympathy and consideration. They admired their spirit
and felt it to be their duty and privilege to give them all
possible help. This was shown in many little ways.
14. When the roads were countersunk according to
rule one, huge heaps of soil were laid oiit on each side of
the roads. Fairly good bricks could be made from this
Bangalore', South India
109
earth. The builders were advised and shown how to do
this, with the result that bricks could be made on the spot
about 40 per cent cheaper than if purchased at the usual
brick yards. The raggi fields, during the first year or two,
gave place to smoking brick fields and these again to ele¬
gant cottages as can be now seen.
15. The designing of these cottages and the passing
of the buildings gave room for further help, so that all
around the kindly builders and the sympathetic executive
tried by every means possible to help each other, and to
make the little town the real success it has now become.
16. In the last economic conference at Mysore the
surprising statement was made that dairy produce to the
value of four millions of rupees was imported into that
Province in one year 1913. The table-land of Mysore, with
its malnad or low mountain ranges, is specially adapted
for the raising of good cattle. The Government Military
Transport bulls, used by tbe British Government, were
obtained from Mysore. It has the reputation of producing
the finest fleet trotting cattle; and yet its cows and dairy
productions are apparently so neglected as to require such
large importations. It will be interesting to know how it
is in other parts of India. The newest methods in the
raising and improving of milch cattle, are apparently
not yet known in India. It has been already stated that
even a place like Java, under Dutch jurisdiction, is im¬
porting largely into India; so are the enterprising Japan¬
ese. Other countries are becoming wealthy at the ex¬
pense of India which is governed by one of the most
enlightened of nations and yet is so dreadfully backward
in all chat can make a people rich, so antiquated in the
methods on which the resources of its life depend.
The development of the land has not advanced since the
British occupation.
17. The previous Hindu and Muhammadan Govern¬
ments had made that wonderful system of artificial tanks
or reservoirs on which the agricultural prosperity of South
lio Plague-Proof Town Planning in
India depends. It is said that the length of these artificial
embankments can girdle the earth. All these are mighty
things to have accomplished. In one very large reservoir
in South India there is an inscription of the sun, moon
and stars indicating that the Hindu who bniit it had
made it so substantial that it would continue so long as
creation existed. These remarkable systems of tanks in
South India have made it the great rice producing country
it now is, and added considerably to the wealth of the
agricultural people who form of the population.
What has England done, in comparison for these people?
Very little indeed. If in its schools it can only keep
them abreast with improvements made in other parts of
the world it will do them a real good. The country is
naturally a very rich one. It has a teaming and indus¬
trious population, with few wants, and a cheap manner of
living. If this population is wakened up it can supply
half the world and the land become very rich indeed.
18. A young man was educated to be an Engineer and
started life as such ; but the rough life of an Engineer
was too much for him so he gave it up and went into
business in a European firm. The kindly merchants did
not demand a high academical training from him, but they
desired that he should know their business well and
took a little trouble in teaching him, with the result
that his income gradually rose to something like
lis. 15,000 a month which he would never have got as an
Engineer.
19. The poverty of India is due to its undeveloped
economic conditions; its natural products are kept very
scanty indeed and every country in the world is seizing on
this and making it their dumping ground. Asia and
Europe are being enriched by India, but India itself is
being kept poor. When its economic conditions are im¬
proved it will become rich and wealthy. With its indus¬
trious and frugal manner of living and no compulsory
Military service, it ought to be, and with God’s help will
Bangalore, South India
Hi
be, one of the richest countries of the world ; and it will
then begin to realise the true value of British Adminis-
■ tration.
20. This reference to the economic conditions of India
is made because there is an irrepressible desire to seize
this opportunity to say some little thing towards the good
of a very interesting and loveable people whose welfare is
the first object of the. British Government; and also because
an improvement in economic conditions will lead to
improvements in the sanitary conditions of the people
and wilj mean the removal of the causes of the plague
and the great sorrow it has brought to the common
people.
21. As a result of the sanitary rules on which Fraser
Town has been laid out and built and its exceptionally
fine position, as already stated, it has become a sort of
health resort and sick people from distant places have
been drawn to it with the best results. They have
expressed astonishment at the neat comfortable little
cottages and at the very cheap rents. They have
stated that nothing like it can be found in all India.
Without intending it Fraser Town has also become the
poor whites’ paradise. The better-to-do white is building
in l acre plots on higher ground across the railway, but
the poorer one is finding Fraser Town a delight. For the
small reut'of Rs. 3 per month a neat little cottage
(three roomed) with a small garden around it can be hired,
and though amongst Indians, the little open area around
it in a manner isolates the little house and does not make
it so objectionable as living in other native localities.
22. A soldier’s widow on a small pension took one of
these cottages and showed her friends around the place
with great joy ; spotlessly clean with white curtains at
doors and windows it did look nice and comfortable.
Thus the poor, both black and white, can live in peace
and quietness in Fraser Town, “ Not being afraid of the
terror by night or the arrow that flieth by noonday,
112 Plague-Proof Town Planning in
nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor
for the destruction that wasteth by noonday. There no
evil shall befall them, neither shall any plague come nigh
their dwelling.” A sort of health Arcadia!
26. But it will require Argus-eyed angels of vigilance
to always keep it thus. It wanted some effort and firmness
to persuade some of the builders to observe the plague-
proof rules; and especially to keep the buildings within one-
third the area of the site plot. It was a new departure, and
different to all their old ideas of things, and most people
did not understand it, some people probably do not under¬
stand it yet especially why only | of their own land should
be built on. Official life in India is so changeful and new
comers cannot always see with the eyes of those who have
waded through the dreaded terrors of the plague and tried
to learn its secrets at the very gates of the enemy; thus
one is sometimes despondent of the future.
24. Hence the reason for this publication, that the
necessity of each rule may be fully understood and the
rule observed with very great care.
25. After the first severe outbursts of plague a scheme
was prepared for opening out the congested areas of the
town and making three new extensions for the evicted
people on the north, east, and south-east portions of
the town at a cost of Rs. 17 lakhs. The Corporation
approved of this project. Colonel Branfoolf, afterward
Sir Arthur Branfoot of the Secretary of State’s Depart¬
ment, went through it in detail. He was then the Princi¬
pal Medical Officer to the General Commanding the Station
and obtained the General’s hearty approval to the scheme.
Thus supported, Sir Donald Robertson, the then Resident
in Mysore, submitted it to the Government of India and
urged its early sanction. But the Government of India
were apparently staggered at the great cost of the project.
26. After much correspondence a small part of the
scheme as a. Jrial was submitted when that good officer
the late Sir James Bourdillon was Resident. This
Bangalore, South India 113
comprised the opening out of a small section of Black-
pally and the constructing of what is now known as Fraser
Town for the evicted people.
27. The. Hon’ble Mr. Stuart Fraser was so good as to
allow this small town to be built on the original lines
and rules already explained by which it was made a plague-
proof town. Through the kindly continual personal in¬
spection of Mr. Fraser and Mr. Moore the Collector, the
builders were encouraged to erect the pretty little cottages
peculiar to this town.
28. A'fter about four hundred cottages were completed
at the earnest request of the builders thereof, Mr. Fraser
was so good as to allow the town to bear his own
name. Many others, official and non-official, took a great
deal of interest in the place and helped at the beginning
to popularize it to both Guilders and to residents. It is
now very popular and has turned out a great financial
success. The builders can sell their cottages at a profit of
a hundred per cent. They deserve this for they risked a
great deal at the beginning. The town has also become
a model and other parts of India have asked for its plans.
To slavishly copy it may not be correct for there are such
things as various soils, slopes, and other natural condi¬
tions of the land to be considered.
29. But there is no reason why every Indian town, and
even larger village, should not have something like it;
and the bulk of India’s population introduced to a new
and more sanitary manner of living. It will tell princi¬
pally in the good of the children; and the coming genera¬
tion will reap its advantages and acknowledge it as a real
Social Reform which was only possible in the peace and
security afforded by the firm and just British Adminis¬
tration. It is not necessary now to huddle together for
mutual protection. Each family can live under its own
vine and fig tree and feel safe from all the violence and
plundering of the past.
30. It must not be concluded from anything stated
m Plague-Proof Town Planning in
that the writer avers against the British occupation of
India. On the contrary, no greater good could have hap¬
pened to the country. But it is only Divinity that cannot
make mistakes; and whatever errors have been made were
the results of the very best intentions. Dark and down¬
trodden India., which had writhed for centuries under the
heel of the oppressor has been emancipated; its feeble
knees are being gradually strengthened so that it may
walk and leap in the joy of the new life flowing now into
it. England can truly say in the words of the old inspired
prophet. “ He hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the
prison to them that are bound; to give unto them beauty
for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning. And they shall build
the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations,
and they shall repair the wastd cities, the desolations of
many generations.” “ For your shame ye shall have double;
and for confusion they shall rejoice in their portion ; there¬
fore in their land they shall possess the double; ever¬
lasting joy shall be unto them.”
31. Is not this great morning of promise already break¬
ing ? Is not a new sun already rising on India ? When
the orbit is run, the meridian glory will surely come. Let
those who would unwisely haste matters be careful.
The pace may appear slow, but it is sure, and a false step
may result in a great set back and India cannot risk this.
After three centuries of benevolent Roman occupation,
some of the ancient Britons considered that they were
capable of ruling their own land—educated in Rome some
talking the Roman language, dressed in the Roman toga
in the place of their old tunic, and with their hair trim¬
med in the Roman fashion, some presumed to think that
they were all sufficient. But when the last Roman
legion left and the pirate ships of Saxons arrived how
sad was their fate! God grant that History will not
repeat itself in India. Under the aegis of the wise
British administration India has already grown wonder-
Bangalore, South India
115
fully. With continuous internal peace and making the
most of her vast resources, in quietness and confidence,
she will develop a hundredfold in the future. A result of
these improvements will be the disappearance of pesti¬
lence and plague and famine, when her population will
also go up in mighty bounds, and German Africa will be
given to her as a Colony. Who will be so bold as to
predict the final result ? A highway is being opened out
for the Princes of the East, when the Indian Princes will
takte their rightful places in the Great Parliament of the
nations *of all the earth. After all England is only an
humble instrument in the hands of a Loving Mediator
who is raising India from darkness to light to present it a
great redeemed and glorified nation into the hands of His
Almighty Father.
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